12:17; 12/17

While I was swimming the Chicot Challenge, unbeknownst to me a crises was brewing on West Harding Street in Greenwood, Mississippi. My aged mother, who has had more health struggles than Job himself, fell, landing on her face, and producing wounds of an unspeakable number and severity. My sister called the ambulance which transported her to the Greenwood Leflore Hospital where they tapped out, so to speak, and pronounced her beyond their capabilities. She had a broken nose, a split nose, multiple bruises, and damage to her upper lips that the attending doctor declared beyond his ability and the ability of any physician in town to repair. She needed a plastic surgeon. So it was off to Jackson, to a burn center that had several competent plastic surgeons on staff.

She suffered a devastating fall, an ambulance ride to the local hospital, a long ride to Jackson, heavy medications, surgery, and the slow post-surgery recovery that always comes with being put under anesthesia. So what was her main concern after waking up? Was it: 

a) Will I survive? 

b) How long will it take to recover? 

c) Will I have permanent scarring? 

d) When can I go home? or 

e) How is Zane? 

If you chose e) How is Zane? then you probably had a mom like mine.

It is no exaggeration to say that the worse she is the more she seems to worry about me. When she was hospitalized almost constantly in the winter and spring of 2012, her chief concern was, "Did you get something to eat?" I was asked this over and over both to my amusement and annoyance.

"Mom, I have a debit card. I know how to get to the cafeteria."

I think I already wrote in this blog somewhere about the time I was staying with her when she shuffled in on her walker and brought me a bell. 

"What?" I asked.

"If you need something, ring the bell."

I guess I will always be her little fair-haired boy and I don't mind, in fact it's quite touching, but it makes me a very poor care-giver. Whenever I am with her, she wants to know if I have eaten, have I had a nap, do I want to watch something on TV? do I want to take all the newspapers home? did I notice the Diet Cokes in the refrigerator? etc. 

Recently I became Facebook friends with an elderly woman I knew while I was growing up. She had a daughter my age, and two sons, one older and one younger than me. We went to the same church so she remembers the little fair-haired boy my mom sees every time I try to take care of her. Over the past few months, anytime I posted something about training or the swim on the Chicot Challenge IV Event Page, she always responded, "Now Zane, you be careful."

I was always amused.

And touched.

Thank you, Mrs. Browning. I will be careful.

Anyway, to make a short story long, that Saturday when I was swimming for twelve hours, my mom asked my sister over and over, "Have you heard from Zane? Did he finish the swim?"

Finally, Carol was able to give her an answer, "It's over. He swam it in twelve hours and seventeen minutes."

"Twelve seventeen," Mom repeated. She was quiet a second. "That's your dad's birthday."

Old Friends

Old friends. 

My wife and I are now aged enough to have old friends as well as friends who are old. I'm not sure how I got to musing over this, but the topic has intruded upon my thoughts more than twice. Once it hit me so forcefully that I sat down and wrote a long boyhood story about the topic.  

During the visitation at a funeral I preached, I overheard some conversations between old boyhood friends who had not seen one another in many years. Their fond recollection of old times reminded me of something I am sure most of us have experienced a time or two: growing up with friends, suffering a long separation, then having a glad reunion. Upon seeing a childhood buddy, it is as if that huge chasm of time collapses in a moment and you and your friend have never been apart. That is a special moment, an enriching experience, something everyone should have at least a few times in their life.

When I wrote "My Friend Poot" (published in this blog on 4/13/14), that is exactly what I had in mind. I tried to end the story in a way that showed the reader without telling the him that these two boys, though they had fist-fought in an elementary school bathroom, would now be friends forever. That is precisely how it is with Poot and me. He lives in Tennessee and we see one another very infrequently. But when we do, the span of time between our last meetings is no distance at all.

I suppose some people miss out on that. Military brats, as they are sometimes called, could fall into a group who move too often to continue those early friendships long enough to experience the "old friend phenomena." The children of pastors is another group who might move frequently enough to miss this blessing in life. When God called me into the ministry, I noticed a stress in our daughter although she never verbalized it, and to my discredit, neither did I. I did, however, sense that our children, especially our daughter, needed stability. Looking back I can now see how God built into me certain traits that caused and enabled me to stay in one small church for twenty-three years. I am proud of that record even though it eventually cost me my ministry (see "Transition" 9/14/2014).

Our daughter was the chief beneficiary of our ministerial endurance. I have no doubt that our son, Forrest, would have adjusted quickly and well to any move we may have made. But our daughter, Andrea, was different and God gave me the sense to see that. And today I am proud of the fact that Andrea is still friends with several people she grew up with but one in particular rivals anything I have experienced myself. Mary Katherine lived one street over from us, they attended the same school, and were buddies from the beginning. MK once went to Florida with us. I called her out rental child, and a few years back she was instrumental in my daughter getting a job. When MK was planning her wedding, Andrea suggested she get me to perform the ceremony. 

"Do you think he will?" her friend anxiously asked.

"Mary Katherine," Andrea pleaded, "he's known you your whole life."

It was my honor.

Recently my wife received a friend request on Facebook from someone we used to run around with way back in the day when Penny and I were first married. The old friend was going to be in Greenwood for a short while. Could they get together? the message asked. They got together and had lunch before the old friend moved on to another state.

"It was like we were never apart," my wife blurted out after coming home from work the day she and Kay Kay had lunch. "It was amazing."

Yeah, I thought. I know something about that.

We were having dinner with John and Patsy, our old friends who are old. I call them old only because I can because neither of them will ever read this blog. I used to call John, "Sir" until he finally broke me of that with the offense he took at every instance of said respect. "I'm only fourteen years older than you," he scolded me more than once. Sorry. That's how Momma raised me.

I guess part of the problem there is I never viewed myself as an adult. I have been a late bloomer at everything. I graduated college at the age of thirty-five, ran my first marathon at the age of fifty, swam my first marathon at the age of fifty-one. Now only days away from my fifty-ninth birthday, I am just hitting my stride as a swimmer, about to take on my fourth Chicot Challenge.

In my mind I am still a youth. The difference between the boy that was and the boy that is lies only in the fact that I now have vastly more experience at playing games and those games have changed a bit. So have my chores. But I digress. The old saying, "The only difference between men and boys is the price of the toys," is certainly true with. My toys now are a carbon fiber bicycle, an expensive GPS watch, some high priced running shoes, and swim paddles. I have a nice collection of swim paddles. One exception, to the price of toys is goggles. Even though swimming is now my number one sport game, I will swim Chicot Challenge IV in the same pair of $6.00 Walmart goggles that I swam Chicot I in. Not the same model, the same pair. But that is another issue, another post.

This inner view of myself, this late-bloomer life I've led has caused me some conflicts along the way. Besides offending my old friend John, when I came on staff at MDCC, I was suddenly colleagues with people who only a few years before had been my teachers. For me this was weird in a major way. I didn't know how to act. One co-worker once told me, "If you call me that [Ma'am] one more time, we are going to have a problem." Sorry. It's Momma's fault. And can't you see, I'm just a boy, and I want to go outside and play.

So my wife and I now have old friends, and friends who are old, and friends who are old and old friends. Already we've lived long enough to have seen some of these friends remanded to the Mississippi Delta soil. A little over a year ago, I preached the funeral of one we grew up with, a good guy named Gary Minyard who was everybody's friend. There have been others also, gone too soon in an uncertain life that promises none of us another day. I can now see growing on the horizon like a building thunderstorm a time coming that if our hearts keep beating we will have only old friends and then no friends or only young friends. I saw this happen to my dad.

Roger Hodge had the most eclectic band of buddies one could ever imagine. On the one hand, he kept company with several millionaires. On the other hand, he ran with folks that his wife and children thought were a bit scandalous. Not that we judged the latter group for their lack of finances, but one went to prison and and least one more should have been locked up for crimes committed if not for mental issues he consistently displayed, and one proved himself to be a prolific and competent thief. And that is not all, but I will spare you. It was like he was drawn to the extremes, the poles, the best and the worst. Maybe he found the middle boring. Sometimes I do.  

One group of his friends was his tennis playing partners. I remember as a very young child watching them play at Whittington Park. They played before I started first grade. They played while I was allegedly growing up. They played after I left home and got married. I used to tease Dad that one day he and his pals would have their tennis rackets duct-taped to their walkers. It almost happened that way. They grew old together then started dying. In their final years, they played on Bill Brown's court in Schlater, MS where Mrs. Brown would roll Bill out in a wheelchair so he could watch the action. Finally, one too many died, and they could no longer get up a game. An era ended.

Dad outlived most of his friends, but he still had a few. He had old friends and friends who were old at the CPA firm where he worked for over forty years. When he died, I called Bob Knight at the firm because I didn't want Bob to hear about Dad's passing secondhand; I thought he deserved better than that. And I wanted him to tell the other folks there, folks like David Lott who was Dad's fishing partner for several decades. Dad always said David Lott was the best fishing scout he ever knew. David could go to a new lake or new part of the marsh or gulf in Louisiana and learn how to fish the new territory faster than anyone he had ever seen. That's what Dad said, and Dad was usually right.

After he left us, his children were going through drawers at the house. I noticed a small bulletin board in the den above a desk we were cleaning out. Pinned to the board was a note, a list, of people Dad had met and friends he had made at the gym he worked out at in his final years, Advanced Rehab. On the list was a name I had begun to hear from Dad's lips. A new friend who was old. He was there when Dad died.

There's nothing like old friends. If you have one or two or more of them, place a phone call, say a pray, cherish memories. Get together and do something.

You'll miss them when they're gone. 

Or they will miss you.

Too Short

You've heard it before. Many times, too many times. Life is short. Life is too short. Life is too short for (fill in the blank). In fact you could say that life is too short to hear that life is too short. Life really is that short.

It is true, though, that life is short. And even if we didn't believe that or understand that as youths, we figure it out by the time we hit forty or so. Maybe younger. But I'm a slow learner. Experience teaches us and has taught even me that life sneaks up on us and then goes roaring by like a drag racing car leaving us scratching our heads and wondering where it went.

The other night while Penny and I were out with friends eating some of the fish I routinely swim with, I made the comment that life is too short to eat coconut. I was responding to the complaint that I don't eat that stuff. Why would that bother people? Why am I expected to like everything on planet earth when no one else does? when the truth is I probably like more food than just about everybody. But I do not like everything, and slowly I have realized that life really is too short to force feed myself disgusting substances like I've done as long as I can remember. 

For most of my life I have crammed things into my mouth and chewed things that I did not want, I did not like, and I did not ask for because somebody else told me I should. Under the influence of adults who grilled it into me that it was for my own good to eat so and so, I tortured myself with green beans, and green beans. Come to think of it, there is not a whole lot besides green beans I really dislike. But for long years, I have forced them down and sometimes still do because Mamma told me to, Daddy told me to, Aunts and Uncles told me to, and even my wife tells me to now. "You don't eat enough green stuff," my wife loves to scold. What?!?!?! And this to a guy who orders a salad at a Mexican Restaurant.

Besides green beans (I do like most vegetables) bread crust was the most common thing that I tortured myself with under the influence of lies told to me over and over by adults whom I think apparently didn't want me to enjoy food. "All the vitamins are in the crust," countless big people who should not have lied to me when I was a little person preached to me over and over. And the most incredible thing about that was that I only figured it out a few short years ago. 

Duh! 

Why would vitamins migrate to a certain part of the bread just because it was more cooked than the rest? If anything, the extra heat would kill off vitamins rather than add to them. By the way, I said something to this effect recently on Facebook and was told, "No, you are confused with fruit." The sad truth is, I am not confused, but was told both lies. Many times. By many people.

Finally, I stopped force feeding myself bread crust because I began to believe something else grown ups told me my whole life: life is too short. Wow, it finally backfired on them. It certainly is too short too ruin a good sandwich because all the vitamins are in the crust (NOT!) and people in other parts of the world don't have enough to eat. Incredibly, I still eat most of the crust just not all of it. My upbringing is still too powerful to completely escape its influence, so I consider it a great victory and a sign that I have grown up and become independent when I can leave a bite or two of bread crust on an otherwise empty plate.

And looking back I am amazed at how many times my dad played dirty when it came to food. Roger Hodge was a good man, a fine father, and an unending positive influence in my life. Though he is no longer in this land of the living, he impacts my life day by day. Yet as a child he routinely played the garbage man card to get me to eat stuff I didn't want. As a little guy, I idolized garbage men who in those days came around behind your house carrying big buckets that they dumped your garbage and trash into. The man who came to our house had huge rippling muscles and I wanted to grow up and be like that, be a garbage man with big biceps who rode on the big truck and manhandled trash cans.

"If a garbage man was here, he would eat that," Dad told me countless times. And it always worked because that was my life's ambition, my career goal, the most manly thing I knew at the time. Now I look back and see it as dirty pool. I would have been just fine without forcing squash into my mouth. And have I ever told you about my great-grandmother? She told us that if we ate squash we could fly. I remember my younger sister and me gagging on a bite of the yellow vegetable and then running up and down the hallway at 422 West Harding Street flapping our arms like wings trying in vain to fly.

And back to the fruit. Life really is too short to eat watermelon rind. Certainly you didn't really do that, you say to yourself as you read these words. Of course I did. At least I always ate it down until I gagged. Without that, I felt like I was being a bad citizen, disappointing my parents, and sinning against God, which was worse to me than the inevitable gag reflex and stomach ache that I always got form the otherwise enjoyable experience of eating watermelon. I quit that too. I'm a regular rebel now.

And then there is coconut. Even as a youth, I never caved on that one and my parents did not overly exert their considerable influence in trying to make me eat the stuff. I don't like it and unlike so many other things that I once hated and now love, I never outgrew my disaffection for it. I don't think its nasty, I just don't want it in my mouth. I don't want it in candy, I don't want it in cakes, I don't want it in anything. Did I mention I don't want it?

But besides all of that, life is not only too short to do some things, it is also too short NOT to do some things. Life is too short to not live our dreams, if at all possible, whatever those dreams may be. For me life is too short not to go on long runs with Buddy Bones. Life is too short not to swim in catfish ponds, to hug dogs, to pet cats, to take walks with Jeff. Life is to short not to trust God, to fellowship with believers, to sing for joy. Life is too short not to set goals, to take a dare, to seek adventure. I could go on and on, but I bet you get the point.

Life is even too short not to enjoy coffee. Amazingly my students constantly warn me of the dangers of the bean that God created to bless our mornings. 

"It's bad for you," they say.

"Says who?" I question.

They never have an answer but they are sure it must be bad, I suppose they think, because some people, namely I, enjoy it so much.

"I can't believe you drink that stuff," one or two of them will sometimes say.

And I defend myself again.

I've even been accused of being a hypocrite for making them write papers on diabetes and nutrition while I drink coffee.

What?!?!?!?

Life is too short, however, to be talked out of the bean, the dream, the goal, whatever that goal may be. Therefore I keep drinking, keep swimming, and keep dreaming up new adventures, keep hanging out with the cats, keep going on Google Maps looking for unexplored roads.  

Life is too short for anything less.

Oct 19-25

It was a good week improved by Mississippi State beating Kentucky on the road to retain it's number one ranking in the AP college football poll. The Bulldogs now sit all alone atop the national standings as well as the SEC West Division. Almost every time I think about State's football season, I cry. I wonder what Dad knows. Does he get to watch from heaven? What a treat it would be if God allowed me to sit down and talk to him and break the news, to tell him about the season, to tell him about whipping three straight top ten teams like they were ugly red-headed step children. I would love to see his face when I told him we are ranked number one in the nation and have been for three straight weeks.

I have written already about parts of last week. Monday and Wednesday afternoons I lifted weights with Big John in the back yard gym. Monday night ran 9.6 miles after work and Wednesday I ran 5.22 in the dark after class. My swimming fell off the charts with only 4,232 total meters in two short swims, one in the pool and one in the pond. The pond swim was in a wetsuit with the water all the way down to 68 degrees. For me, that temperature is life threatening. For Shawn C. Turner that temperature is a life threatening, but for a different reason. It threatens to freeze me and fry Shawn. What can I say? I am no longer delusional about my cold water abilities.

Friday I slipped out for a 16.38 miles run/walk, and Saturday I had a lot of things planned but all I did was a short run. There was simply too much football on TV to be very productive.

For the week, I
ran 33.4 miles.
swam 4,232 meters,
rode six miles on the bike,
walked 5.74 miles, and
lifted weights two times.

I am thinking very seriously about the Mississippi Trail 50. If I am going to do this, I need to pull it off before I get too much older. The last time I was there, in 2009, I tapped out after only 33.4 of a possible 50 miles. I didn't get my belt buckle. I want that buckle. I want to wear it to work, to church, to eat with my wife. OK, that does it. I'm in. Tonight, after class, I officially open my training camp for the Trail 50. My wardrobe needs an upgrade and a buckle is the kind of accessorizing that could make my wife proud.

Happy as a Dead Pig in the Sunshine

Darn tootin’! How can I not be? Happy. Ecstatic. Walking on air. Fist pumping.

You need some background to understand.

I got my college degree from Delta State in Cleveland, Mississippi, but from the time of my youth I was raised to pull for Mississippi State. My dad graduated there in 1950 and as recently as last September—he passed in November—we watched a State game together, and he pitched fits of unbelievable violence and ferocity as State went down to LSU. Again. I have video evidence of this. He never got used to it. He never quite believing. He never stopped watching. His passion for his school never dimmed in the least, age and time, and losing seasons could not rust it out. My mother never got used to it either. She would lock herself in her bedroom when a State game was on TV to get away from Dad’s outbursts.

In Mississippi, we are taught from our youths about the age of accountability, that age, around twelve, when allegedly you become mature enough to answer to God. We also have the age of decision. If you are from out of state, or if your parents didn’t go to college, you have to make a decision to pull Mississippi State (State) or the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss, aka “the school up North”). That’s just the way things are around here. In Mississippi a mixed marriage is when a State and Ole Miss fan marry. It is very rare, extremely shocking, and it almost never works.

I can remember as a boy when my dad and I would squirrel hunt in Carroll County and then cut wood afterwards. The pickup truck would be parked on a ridge and a radio was always on a stump tuned in to Mississippi State playing whomever. While Dad cut I loaded. Dad would fit and cuss and throw things, and when I wasn’t terrified, I tried hard not to laugh. We, State, almost always lost. It was tough but somehow he engrained it into me that my lot in life was to suffer vicariously for Mississippi State, to be faithful, to hope against hope that we could win a game.

As a program in a big time conference, we have had little success. As a young boy, I didn’t know anyone at school who was a State fan. The biggest game of the year, the Egg Bowl, was between Mississippi’s two SEC schools, and Ole Miss always won. Their fans learned early how to be obnoxious. I always said, “Wait till next year.” Next year only started coming with the arrival of Dan Mullin as our football coach. Since Mullin’s arrival, we have won four of the last five Egg Bowls.

Not only has everyone we ever played beaten us like a drum, but even when we had a little talent, we refused to win football games. We beat ourselves and that is the part that was the toughest to take as a fan. Once, on national TV, we marched to ball backwards the length of the field. I exaggerate not. We went from first and goal to punting out of our own endzone in one wrong-way drive. That was typical. We did stuff like that with personal fouls and fumbles and negative plays. For half a decade, we were the most penalized team in the nation and our coach, Jackie Sherrill, said, “It’s not a problem.” It was sickening and the after effects linger years later. Whenever we get a lead I think, where are the personal fouls? Why don’t we throw the ball to the defense and then not tackle him so he can run it back for a touchdown? Like Pavlov’s dog, we have been conditioned for defeat.

I became so disgusted so many times that I vowed to divorce myself from them, to pull for anyone but them. But it was just too deeply seeped inside me from a lifetime of rooting for a loser, of being in a State family.

That is one reason why, when someone on Facebook recently called State supporters “fair weather fans,” I was literally mad enough to fight. I would have struck and punched and kicked if the opportunity had arisen. No one my age who is a State fan can possibly be a fair weather fan. That is an utter impossibility. We who pull for State are loyal. We have suffered. We have endured.

Saturday, October 4, 2014, was the biggest football day in our State’s illustrious history. That was not my assessment but the judgment of countless people whose job it is to cover college football. Undefeated and nationally ranked Alabama, (number three) was coming to Oxford (the school up North) to face undefeated and 11^th ranked Ole Miss. College Game Day was in Oxford for its first trip ever to the Magnolia State. Also SEC Nation was in Starkville, the home of the Dogs, to cover undefeated Texas A & M’s (ranked 6^th) showdown with undefeated and 12^th ranked Mississippi State.

The whole week not only SEC fans and commentators but the national sports media was calling it the biggest football weekend in the state’s history. These four teams, all nationally ranked, all compete in what undoubtably is the nation’s toughest division of its toughest conference, the SEC West. This was the weekend that would tell if Ole Miss (who has had some success in the past) and State (who has had very limited football success) were for real or just hype.

Also, you need to keep in mind that State and Ole Miss are in a state that has a total population of only two and a half million people. We compete against Alabama who has a much larger population and has won numerous national championships, and LSU who has won a few titles themselves. These high profile programs recruit in our state for a limited talent pool and can get virtually whomever they want from their own states. Alabama’s football budget is larger than State’s and Ole Miss’ combined. Their facilities are better, their reputations are better, their appeal to young players is better. Although Mississippi’s SEC schools have been trending upward, to break through and become real contenders in the SEC, we have to beat people like Alabama, LSU, A & M, Auburn, and Georgia, all historically football powerhouses.

We did it.

First, State put a beatdown on A & M just one week after going to Shreveport and whuppin LSU. They call LSU’s stadium “Death Valley” because, as they say, “It is the place where dreams come to die.” Usually dreams do die there. Very, very few teams go in there and win. State did it, and we did it big time. Then we whupped them Aggies like they stole our bulldog or something. It was an impressive victory, a dominant one.

After State did its thing, Ole Miss hosted Alabama and whipped them. The game was close and came down to the wire, but they won. Wow. It has never been like this before. Now Ole Miss and Mississippi State are tied for the number three ranking in the AP Poll. Awesome.

Last week, College Game Day made its first ever trip to Mississippi by going to Oxford to cover the Alabama game. Next week they make their second trip to Mississippi. Guess where? You got it. They are going to Starkville the home of the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The Auburn Tigers, rated number two in the AP, are coming to town. I am nervous; Auburn is good; but we are good enough to win.

It is a good time for Mississippi football, and it’s finally fun to be a Bulldog fan. I wish Dad was here to see this. He would be so happy. He would have pitched some fits but not out of anger and frustration but out of joy and elation.

One of Those Days

I had one of those days. Tuesday. My wife has them often and I always know it because I can see the signs. It makes me feel helpless because I don't know what to say or do to help her.

When I have them no one knows and I am not fully aware why no one recognizes it in me. I had my worst one ever when my aunt Barbara died. I worked that day and dealt with people from the beginning until the end, and no one ever noticed that I cried all day long.

No one.

That makes me feel invisible.

I'm sure it's my fault because I will never say to anyone, I am hurting or sad or disturbed. I suppose I am too much like my dad in that regard as I am like him in so many other ways. Men of his generation did not talk about their feelings. They just didn't, and looking back I can now see how he sent out signals, but I was too obtuse to read the signs. I would drop by the house to see him and when I would get ready to leave often he would say, "I'll fix some popcorn." I used to think that was comical, but I didn't have a clue that he was really saying, "I'm lonesome, and I want you around." One day it was around 3:00 pm, and I started to go. "I'll cook some fish," he said without even looking at me. And he did. He just got up and went to the kitchen, and twenty minutes later we were eating fried speckled trout.

I have written before about his death and my reaction to it. Shock was the biggest thing I had to deal with. Over time I came to see that disappointment was also in the list of things I had to wrestle with. My hero, who had never let me down, had failed me in the worst way by showing he was mortal after all. Eventually I came to terms with his passing and accepted it. Yeah, those five stages of grief are real after all. But even now, even after acceptance I have those days when I cry and cry and cry.

It was my truck breaking down that was the trigger to this one. I couldn't drive my wounded auto to the repair shop but had to drag it with a tow strap, and like so many times before I picked up the phone to call him. "Who ya gunna call?" For me it was never Ghost Busters or any one else. It was always Dad.

This time I called RT. Ronald Terrell is my brother-in-law, and he drove from Ruleville, MS to Greenwood, MS to help me haul my truck to the repairman. I asked him how my sister was doing. "She doesn't talk much about your dad anymore," he said. "But I think she's still dealing with it." I guess she's like Dad too. When I see her again I will want to ask her if she ever has one of those days, if she is OK. But I already know that when that time comes it will be as if my jaws are welded shut. The thoughts will be there but the words will never exit my mouth. I'm too much like Dad.

He taught me a lot and maybe emotional awkwardness was not one of the best lessons I learned from him. But he taught me to mow the lawn, how to change a spark plug, how to drive a car, a truck, and a tractor. He taught me how to shoot a shotgun and a rifle, how to hunt and skin animals. He taught me how to build a fire, how to train a bird dog, how to oil leather boots. He showed me fishing knots and how to tie progressively smaller leaders together so that a popping bug would curl out under a limb and gently drop to the water's surface if the fly rod was handled correctly. Besides fly fishing, he taught me how to bass fish, cane pole fish, and fish the marshes of Louisiana. He taught me how to make a meal of sardines and crackers, how to plant and hoe vegetables, even how to make gravy.

One of the best things he ever taught me, however, was about cats. When I was a very young boy we had a cat named Gladys who somehow got in the family way. She went off and had her brood and returned home only to eat. Dad fed her and followed her from afar one day. He tailed her across the backyard, through the cane patch that bordered the back of 422 West Harding Street, and across the huge empty lot between the canes and Park Avenue. Past Park Avenue Dad trailed the cat to what was then a tire place next door to what is now No Way Jose Restaurant. He found Gladys and her brood in a tire in the lot of that business, and he brought them home where they belonged. That taught me something.

Once he showed me how to play with cats, how to tease them with a partially hidden finger and make them pounce and bite and kick. He taught me that they like to have their ears pulled and the sides of their faces rubbed across their eyes because that is where their mommas lick them when they are babies and it makes them feel secure and loved and cared for. I use those lessons often, especially when I have one of those days.

That new kitty, the yellow tabby tom who was living under our house, sleeps on my chest at night. I love that. Sometimes I instinctively reach up and apply one of those lessons Dad taught me so many years ago. I grab an ear and gently pull and rub the face across the eyes. I did this the night after that day. The baby began to purr so forcefully I could feel the vibrations going through the covers and into my chest. Those vibrations and that sound had a soothing effect, and I drifted off to sleep while a tear leaked out of the corner of my right eye.

It Makes Me Think

A year or two ago, I had some business cards printed. You know those "free" Vista Print specials. Wow, like I didn't already know to run like the wind anytime the word "free" is ever used. To make a short story long, I'm very happy with the cards, but these free ones cost me a lot of money.

They have a pic of me on front with my nose taped. What, you expected me in a business suit? I announce myself as an Extreme Swimmer. I like that. Pertinent information like my cell number, blog address, and slogan, "Fighting diabetes one stroke at a time," finish out the card. I always keep a few in my wallet and give them out with pride. The look of confusion on people's faces when I pass them out causes me extreme joy. Maybe I'm sick.

I got a call last night. It's a wonder I answered because I didn't recognize the number. I was almost to Minter City, coming back from Masters Swim in Cleveland, MS, when my phone went off, and I had to turn down my brand new Marty Robbins cd to answer. Marty was singing about loving a Mexican girl in El Paso at Rosie's Cantina, and I was just about to cry. That song does it every time, so I was a little pissed somebody messed up my experience with the dark-eyed Mexican beauty and Marty's enchanted story telling.

"Zane Hodge?"

"Yes?"

"I found one of your business cards at Kroger" [in Cleveland where I had stopped to buy fruit and some diet drinks].

I waited.

"It says you're an extreme swimmer."

"Yes I am," I answered with pride expecting questions about my athletic feats to follow. Instead, what followed was:

"Well, you swam away from you wallet at Kroger."

"WHAT?!?!?!!"

Already I was braking and the truck was lurching towards to shoulder of the road before I finished my scream.

Dude, who does that? Lately I've begun to worry myself. I locked the keys in the truck at Twin Rivers last week. I popped the hood on my truck, Tuesday, and was working on my battery connection-- me and some good Samaritans-- for a good ten minutes before I discovered instead of a battery problem, I had simply left the truck in drive. Who does that? Now the wallet. Who loses their wallet in a busy supermarket in a crime-ridden town? Who tapes their nose with pink duct tape to swim? Who swims in catfish ponds? Who takes his wife's dog riding with the window down to look for cats?

*Raises hand meekly*

OK, maybe I am different, but so was my dad. All of this made me think about him. In fact, everything makes me think about him. Everyday I think about him, and the thoughts are always good.

My sister texted me and wanted me to take Mom to the doctor. No problem. This was my older sister who has been here from Florida for several weeks, and I must confess she has given my younger sister and me a nice break. She also wanted me to go with her to the place in Carroll County to dump some corn, Huh? Don't ask. It's a long story and it involves our dad.

I took Mom to the doctor, and back at the house, Helen was ready to head to the hills. The bed of Dad's truck was filled with corn, really, hundreds of pounds of corn. We dumped the corn in an open field. I don't hunt much anymore, but it is far enough from any of our stands that maybe we won't get arrested this winter if we carry a rifle out there. Then she wanted some gravel, four buckets full, so I loaded her some gravel.

We stopped at Acy's on the way back and had a burger. It was nice.Their burgers are the best, and I don't know when I've enjoyed being with my sister more than then. She was happy, pleasant, and we talked about Dad. She told me that before he died, a Scripture came to her mind,

Genesis 25:8 And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, and old man, and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

She said the idea of a "good old age" began to purcolate in her thoughts. For Dad, his old age was beginning to cross over the line of good into the region of just old. He had stopped fishing in Louisiana, he had fallen in his little boat in Carroll County and wounded himself severely. He had sold his big boat. He had several unexplainable wrecks. He just couldn't do the things he always had, and he went home, "full of years and was gathered to his people."

She said that had prepared her for his death. Nothing had prepared me for his passing. Dad was my hero. In my entire life, he only disappointed me one time. That was when he died. It takes a long time to get over something like that.

Good Week, Jolly Good Week

I had some of the most enjoyable swims of my life this past week, and like most humans I want more. Like my dad, too much has never been enough for me. Oddly, he was a little critical of my swimming. Not that I minded. In fact, I found it amusing. I am just like him with the only difference being that swimming was not one of his excesses. He did swim. I remember growing up when we spent a day in the country he would get in the pond and swim, not splash and soak but swim. But he did it to cool off and for fun. He never made swimming a part of his exercise routine until a few years ago when he would meet me at Twin Rivers in the early mornings and we swam. By this time, he was pretty slow and mostly did heads up breaststroke, although when he was younger he had been pretty quick at the front crawl.

Maybe I overstated the enjoyment part a bit, but they were nice swims, my best of the year. I can think back on some as enjoyable, even more so. For instance, Mary Hodge and I used to go the Hot Springs, Arkansas and stay on Long Island, which is situated in Lake Hamilton. While there it was my morning ritual to rise early and circumnavigate the island all alone, just me and the water. Those were great swims and I want to go back and break my old speed records for circling the island.

Another good thing about the week is for the first time this year I cracked the 20,000 meter barrier, the level of swimming I have long felt I needed in order to approach top form in terms of both endurance and speed. Without swimming Monday (I think it was a bit chilly), I racked up 25,784.29 meters. That's the kind of training I need for the Chicot Challenge. Unfortunately, I am not likely to get anywhere near that in the next seven days because of the cold front that just assaulted us like the Russian military hitting the Ukraine. I only hope spring is typical following this cold front. Last year April was like a bad dream that wouldn't end.

Friday, we had to make up one of the days we were off school when the temperature got all the way down to 33, so I didn't get to the pond until around 3:00 o'clock. My goal was simply to do a non-stop swim that was a little longer than the 3.21 that was my longest of 2014. I noticed early in the swim that my right pectoral muscle had a sore spot in it, and this caused me to go easy on the pace and to constantly question how long I should go. I swam six laps and loved every minute. Crawling out of the pond, I felt refreshed after swimming 3.66 miles in 1:58:15.

Saturday afternoon I went back to D 6 where I found the water all the way up to 64 degrees. My thermometer was in the intermediate zone so the pond was 63 in places and 65 in other areas. The 65 felt wonderful. I only swam an even two miles and stopped because although the soreness in my pec was slightly improved, it was still there. I could have kept going both then and Friday, but I thought it prudent not to risk injury. Twenty-five thousand is a pretty big jump up from last week's 5,000. If I did that sort of thing running, I would be back on crutches.

For the week, I

ran 7.21 miles (huh?),
swam 25,784.29 meters,
walked 3.72 miles, and
lifted weights once.

Not Even Dad

I made a list at the beginning of the week to make sure I did everything I needed to do while on Spring Break. I lost my list and well enough because number one was: grade student papers. Yeah, right.

I was hoping to swim a lot and I've fought really hard to make that happen but alas, it's been too dang cold. The weather has been running five to sixteen degrees below the weatherman's projections. Monday I drove out to Coleman (a part of Tacket Fish Farm) and swam in my latest pond. The water was 60. For Shawn Turner that would necessitate an ice drink at the end and some quality air-conditioning to keep from overheating. But my wetsuited, cold-water sissy self only did one lap (.78 miles) before I didn't want to be cold anymore. Did I mention that I shuffled 4.1 miles before the swim? The whole time I was running, I was trying to get my mind right to stay in the water a really long time. Did you figure out that I failed? Socket rientist.

Tuesday I went back to Coleman. I like the pond, and I love the levees for running before and after swimming, which I did that day. However, the fish are very aggressive in there. Monday I was repeatedly torpedoed by fish who all had very hard heads. How are they making fish these days? I wasn't injured, but I did become nervous thinking about the time I got finned in the palm, paralyzing my right hand or forty-five minutes.

I took a 3.1 mile run first, and I saw something that looked like an alligator swimming in one corner of the pond. I waded in anyway. Actually, I think it might have been a muskrat, but it was definitely some being who does not pay membership dues. Coleman is on the banks of the Quiver River which means all sorts of creatures can sneak in such as alligators, Sasquatch, and giant snapping turtles. When I made it to that part of the pond, something smashed into my right forearm with enough force to knock it upward a foot or more. I about crapped my wetsuit. I think I'm going back to my old new pond, the one I call the Pond of Perpetual Pumpitude. In it the fish are small, the water is deep, and I've never been touched by an unknown, non-dues paying creature while swimming there.

Once again, the temperature failed to get anywhere near its projected high, Wednesday, so I stayed home lifted weights and did a couple of varieties of cardio. Specifically, I performed several rounds of bike trainer/treadmill work. This is the kind of workout that can pay dividends this July when I do the Heart O' Dixie Triathlon if I repeat this often enough. I did eleven minutes on the trainer, spinning up to a shortness of breath and six minutes on the treadmill three times trough for a total of  thirty-three minutes of pedalling and eighteen minutes of running.

After Mary Hodge got off work, we loaded Jeff up and headed to the recycle bins. These huge repositories of our recyclable stuff are located near the banks of the Yazoo River and adjacent to a couple of trails the city built over the last year. One trail is rock, tear-shaped, track-like thing suitable for committing suicide on. But in the woods along the river is a delightful path worthy of running, walking, or just sitting. We took Jeff down there and let him pee on every tree within three feet of the trail. Poor thing must have dehydrated himself, and as we strolled along the river, I started to hatch ideas about swimming.

I'm a coward, but while the cool air blew in our faces, and a chorus of songbirds announced peace to the world, I thought I just might have the moxie to jump in those muddy, swift waters and swim downstream. It was, at least, a nice thought. Heck. I even hatched a plan. I could park at the boat ramp and then walk up the trail carrying my wetsuit. I have tons of old running shoes, so I could just abandon a pair when I got ready to get into the water. If you go to the end of the trail and bit more beyond, there is a ditch that empties into the river and this, I thought, would be the perfect place to suit up and swim. I could go downstream to the boat ramp and climb out there.

Before Mary Hodge and I left, we stopped at the ramp, and I walked down to stick my hand into the water. I left it there a few seconds and surmised the temp to be 58. I can do this, I thought, and I got that slight butteryfly feeling in my stomach, a mixture of nervousness and excitement.

The next day, Thursday, I headed to Carroll County for a run and to check on the place. Since Dad died, I haven't really checked on things because our Carroll County trips have been to Hillbilly Heaven after Mary's mother, Louise, passed. The first thing I did was drive over to Dad's shooting house. I climbed the steps and noticed one of them was rotting. He built this thing when he was in his mid-sixties and over the years has repaired and modified it. Now it has carpeting on the steps, and large carpeted porch on the back, and camouflage netting from the bottom of the front all the way to the ground. He could get in and out without spooking deer if there were any are in his field. The floor is fourteen feet off the ground and it overlooks an acre and a half of a food plot he planted every year. I climbed down and walked the plot and headed up some paths he kept bush hogged. For the fist time in weeks, I cried. I felt so close to him yet so far away.

From the time of his passing, I have laughed as much as I've wept. We had a good relationship, and I have nothing but nice memories of him. He was eccentric and lived life like nobody I ever knew. He believed in filling every day as full as he could fill it. So when I think about him, I often end up smiling or chuckling, or even laughing out loud. But I miss him terribly and that is the part that makes me sad. And even though he was almost eighty-five, I still have this strange feeling that he died before his time. Maybe that comes from his health and activity level. I think it also comes from my mom's health struggles. It just seemed self-evident that he would outlive her so as long as she was alive, his death wasn't even a thought. Now he is gone and she is doing better than she has in years. You just never know about life. Or death.

Everything about the place reminded me of him: his food plot, his shooting house, his gardens, the paths he bush hogged, his tractor. I cranked the tractor. The battery was weak, but it fired up and I drove it around a bit. Then I drove my truck down to the cabin and changed into my running attire. I had planned on running the gravel roads but instead I shuffled the fields and paths of my dad. A Garmin watch is nice like that. You can run anywhere and change plans on the go and still know exactly how far you went. I went 5.03 miles. I went home.

After a brief rest, I decided to drive over to the boat landing to see if I really had the nerve to jump into that river. I squatted and soaked my hand in the water which told me the river had cooled overnight and was at that moment 57 degrees. I looked out at the churning, brown river as it rolled past the boat ramp. I knew how I would feel if I pulled it off: exhilarated. I've felt that before; you get it when you swim something that makes you a little nervous to try. I think it's what the ocean swimmers feel and why they go back and back. But to have that feeling, you must first have the nerve to take the plunge, to put yourself on the line, to try something that is a little bit uncomfortable, frightening even. I wondered if I was strong enough to swim out of the current and into the boat shoot or would the power of the river sweep me downstream and past safety. Then I had a loss of nerve, stood and said out loud, "No way. Dad wouldn't even do that."

Slow Week

Overall it was a pretty slow week exercise wise, but food wise I think I may have set a world record. If eating in a reasonable way is being on the wagon, I not only fell off the wagon, but I crashed that sucker into a ditch and left it there to rot. Jeez Louise, I just can't help myself. My students have been bringing me Snickers Bars, co-workers have been hauling in food everyday, and every time I go to Mom's my sister has cooked something else that needs eating. I've been trying to run these calories off, but it's been like chasing a slow moving pickup truck that keeps pulling away as you run hard and reach for the tailgate. I know what that is like because Dad did that to me once. He was supposed to pick me up while I ran to Greenwood from Carroll County. He passed me while I was crossing the overpass on Highway 82 coming into town, and he exited the highway onto the frontage road. I was sure he saw me, so I crossed the highway, shuffled through the ditch, and sprinted for his truck just as he pulled away from the stop sign. He was going so slow that I almost caught him. But I didn't catch him, and eventually he drove out of sight leaving me breathless, exhausted, and a little ticked off. Why did he do that? He called a few minutes later and yelled, "WHERE THE @^**  #%@^^ ))@ ARE YOU?" I'll spare you the rest, but it's one of those memories of Dad that I laugh out loud when it pops into my mind.

Monday, I ran 3.52 miles, and Tuesday I did 8.3 with some multi-pacing thrown in. I also went to DSU where I swan

3 X 500
4 X 200 with medium paddles as 50 fast/50 easy
8 X 100 @ 1:45 with medium paddles as 50 fast/50 easy
16 X 50 @ 1:15 as 25 easy/25 fast 1-4; 25 fast/25 easy 1-4 all 2 X through
100 easy
Total: 4,000 yards = 3,656 meters.

Wednesday I ran 2.31, and Thursday I both ran and swam. On the road I did 2.07 and in the pool I swam

1,000
850
600 as 75 build, 25 back kick,
100 easy
600 as 25 hard/25 back kick
100 easy
600 as 75 build/25 back
100 easy (end of practice).
Then I swam
15 X 100 @ 2:00 with various paddles,
50 back
Total: 5,500 yards = 5,027 meters.
This was my longest swim since the Suck in October.
  
Friday was cold and rainy so I went to Twin Rivers and ran 2.5 miles on the treadmill. Saturday, Penny and I spent the day in Jackson shopping. When we got home, the weather was still inclement, so I went back to the treadmill and ran 3.5.

For the week, I ran 22.2 and walked 2.73 miles. I swam 8,683 meters but I failed again to lift any weights.

My totals for the year are now

1,209 miles running and
735,443.39 meters swimming (457 miles).

I'm still hoping to make the journey run. Since I'm still experiencing mild achilles issues,  I haven't been able to get excited about it. Anyway, I am almost off work. A few more days of agony and I'll have some time to scheme and dream and maybe make something come to pass.

It Will Be a Great Time

It's Friday morning, the air is cold out, and the rain is peppering the awnings on my house. I love this  kind of day. It's Friday morning, very cold outside and raining pretty hard. I hate this kind of day.

This kind of weather forces me slow down. I love that. This kind of weather forces me slow down. I hate that. Truth be told, I really need the reduced pace. Fatigue has been my constant companion of late, mostly, I think, from the severe emotion I have dealt with -- and still am -- over the last month. I have learned from personal experience that strong emotion, even joy, to me is exhausting, and sometimes even leads to illness. Enough of the mushy stuff.

I never did the recap of last week's training, so here it goes. For Thanksgiving week, I

ran 11.74 miles,
swam 3,427.6 meters, and
walked .8 miles.

That's it. Pretty pathetic. I know. However, you could consider this my off season, so it's not really a total disaster. Oh yeah, I also gained nine pounds.

One thing I have noticed over the last year, though, is that whereas a few days off used to lead to recovery, strength, and freshness, now a few days off leads to a rapid erosion of fitness. I suppose that's a product of my age. I suppose.

Be that as it may, I am attempting to rebuild my condition -- not that it's that bad -- and possible do The Great Noxapater Journey Run in December and well as the Mississippi River Marathon in February. Not only that, but it's not too early to be thinking about the Chicot Challenge 2014. For a while, I wasn't sure I would be able to pull it off again. Some of my concerns were the school I work for hinting at a return to a five-day work schedule, and the uncertainty of my mom's well being. With Dad's passing and Mom's recent health issues, everything was sort of up in the air. Now, I feel more secure about the work situation, at least for next semester, and with Mom home I now have a better picture of what her care will entail. In short, it looks like the Challenge for 2014 is doable. Of course things can change in a moment, but that's always the case, and when I did the first one I was spending major time with Mom in hospitals. Then, when I had a chance, I just kept going out and training as much as I could, and I made it happen. I think I can pull it off again.

There are a number of issues, however, I still have to work out for next year's big swim. One is the distance. For the 2012 edition, I announced 13 miles but wound up swimming 13.94. In 2013, I announced 16 miles and swam 16 miles but not one stroke more. Right now I am thinking of 17 miles, but I've toyed with the idea of 18. Already I have the route settled, although I know from last year that it could change at the last moment depending of the weather conditions of the day. I have my crew in place, and they are more experienced than ever. And I have purchased a pontoon boat, which will make the swim safer and the crew more comfortable. Another issue is publicity. I think I will not do much in that regard. Last year, I worked incessantly to publicize the swim, as did the Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi. I am still baffled that our efforts in that regard so poorly produced results, and I am still pissed off at the Greenwood Commonwealth for not covering the swim.

Concerning The Great Noxapater Journey Run, not only is my fitness a little suspect, but I've had issues recently with a nagging gimpy knee and another Achilles tendon flareup. On the other hand, I now know I could make the run happen in terms of time. My sister has worked out a schedule for Mom's care, and I can get off a few days. Physically, however, I'm just not so sure. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

Still, knowing myself, I am certain that the temptation will be more than I can bear, and when I get my chance I will be shuffling east, trying to make my way across several counties and through Louisville, MS and on to the great metropolis of Noxapater. It will be a great time to contemplate my great grandfather, George Henry Quinton, who walked from Utah to Louisville, MS when he was only twelve years old, having been abandoned there by his family. It will be a great time to contemplate my great, great grandfather, Stephen Krebbs, who walked from Oklahoma to Louisville, MS. It will be a great time to contemplate my Uncle Bo who walked out of Louisville, MS when he was seventeen and right into WWII. His journey took him to the Pacific Theater where he was taken prisoner and survived the Bataan Death March. His bones now lie somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It will also be a great time to contemplate my late father who ran countless miles, caught countless fish, who walked miles and miles hunting quail, who played tennis, cut wood, gardened, and went and did and did and never stopping for anything but death itself. I am my father's son and that means there are some of my impulses I can not or will not control. Recently, of this run, I told my sister, "I have to do this, this run, I have to." Her response was, "My God, I never realized how much like Daddy you are." It will be a great time to contemplate that, how much like Daddy I am.

It will be a great time.

I hope.

Mom Is Home

Thursday I ran 5.15 miles and made it to Masters where I swam

1,650
8 X 50
4 X 200 breathing 3 odd, 5 even
8 X 100 pull with medium paddles @ 1:45 breathing 3 odd, 5 even
8 X 50 @ 1:00 decline 1-4
1,000
Total: 5,050 yards = 4,615.7 meters.

Friday we got Mom out of the hospital. We were a bit apprehensive about her emotional response to entering the house for the first time since Dad passed, but she seemed OK and was happy to be home and happy to see her birds. I stayed around with my sister at Mom's all day and did nothing on the exercise front. Saturday I hung out with my wife. The weather was bad, cold and raining, and I just stayed in all day and watched some football.

I saw this cross in the woods just off
the road while I ran beside the
 Tallahatchie River.

Sunday, however, we were off church and the weather turned out cold but sunny, so I packed my Camelbak Mule and hit the road for a journey/adventrure run. I went west from home to Highway 49, then turned north and ran to Bledsoe Plantation where I got off the highway and followed the river along a gravel road until I got to Money. I crossed the bridge at Money where I stopped and had my sit down meal. Then I headed south down Money Road towards home. The trip was 24 miles of which I ran 15.9 and walked 8.1. I had a good time and got to be alone and think and sometimes not think which is something I enjoy about endurance athletics. I laughed a few times but never cried. I think this means I'm coming to terms with Dad's death.

One thing I did figure out on this journey was the reason his death was so shocking to me. Part of the reason I already knew. His health and acitivity level did not nothing to signal his mortality. But I came to realize it just seemed self-evident that he would outlive mother. Therefore, in my mind, as long as we had Mom, Dad's death was somewhere off in the distant future, something we wouldn't even have to ponder until she passed. I guess this is almost too obvious and cliche sounding to write, but we really can't take anything or anybody for granted.

For the week, I
ran 37.25 miles,
swam 9,048.6 meters, and
walked 10.12 miles.

Last Week

I tried to maintain some training last week despite the fact that the craziness of my Dad's death and my Mom's hospitalization has shifted the whole world off kilter. Monday after work, I waded into the Twin Rivers pool wearing a cheap shorty I bought several years ago. It was better than a poke in the eye but not much. Mostly it just made starting a little easier, less shocking to go flat into the water. I swam 1,200 meters in 62 degree chlorine, and then decided I wanted to be somewhere else. After my night class, I shuffled 4.36 miles alone under the cover of darkness. More and more I have been enjoying the dark, the anonymity, the touch of a wilderness experience that I get even in town.

Tuesday I ran 7.07 miles and then drove my poorly repaired truck to DSU for Masters Swim with the Mad Swimming Scientist, the first time in months. There I stroked

1,550
800 breathing 3, 5, 7, choice by 50s four times through
50 easy
4 X 100 @ 3:00
50 easy
4 X 100 @ 3:00
4 X 125 medium paddles
100 easy
Total: 3,850 yards = 3,518.9 meters.
I was pretty gassed. It's amazing how much fitness I lost in the last two weeks.

Wednesday I ran 3.51 miles, and Thursday it was back to DSU for

2,000
8 X 100 @ 2:00 middle 50 fast
100 easy
6 X 100 @ 2:00 last 50 fast
4 X 100 @ 2:00 fist 50 fast
300 easy
Total: 4,200 yards = 3,838.8 meters.

Friday I had to attend a conference in Goodman, MS at Holmes Community College. I carpooled with Anita Horn and Emily Riser. The campus I found to be surprisingly really pretty, and to borrow a phrase from Jerry Clower, it "flung a cravin' on me." I thought how wonderful it would be to work in such an atmosphere. While I waited for Niter Horn to finish her session, I walked around and got in 3.24 miles. That's all I did exercise-wise that day.

Saturday started with breakfast at Huddle House with my old friend, Daniel Collins. We do this about once per month, and he was the first person I told about the insecurity I experienced at my dad's death. I left home thirty-six years ago and was unaware that his mere presence in my life made me feel safe, surrounded, protected. He understood, having lost his parents a few years ago, and said he felt the same way when his dad died. It's nice to have someone knows what you are going through.

Later that morning, I took my new wetsuit to Twin Rivers and swam 3,600 meters in 56 degree water. Afterwards I felt sick, nauseous, shaky. I don't know why, but often I feel ill after a wetsuit swim. That night, in the dark I went out for a run and didn't stop until I had done 9.35 miles with three tempo intervals thrown in (1.02, .63, and .52). I am enjoying running in the dark and for the first time in a long time I felt fit despite having put on a few pounds of late.

For the week, I

ran 24.29 miles
lifted weights two times
walked 4.84 miles, and
swam 12,154.7 meters.

For the year, I have
swum 714,284.29 meters and
run 1,138.17 miles.

A Little Catch Up

Endangeredswimmer hasn't been updated much lately due to some pretty severe events in my family. This is my attempt at a catchup. I did post a couple of days ago, a piece about my dad, but I never did my totals for the week of 10/28-11/4, and I wrote nothing about the following week. Now I will attempt to document my training or lack thereof. For two weeks ago, my totals were:

swim - 6,500 meters
walk - 2.08
weights - one time
run - 21.43

For the year that brought me to

702,129.59 meters of swimming and
1,085.28 miles of running.

We had both parents in the hospital that weekend, and then Dad died unexpectedly the following Monday, Nov. 4, wiping out swimming for that week. I never knew so much was involved in burying someone. I did, however, run everyday, or every night to be precise. I put my shoes on each night after work or whatever and went out for a run thinking about my dad with each step. For the week  of 11/4-11/10, I

ran - 28.6 miles,
lifted weights once,
walked - 5.63 miles, but for the first time this year I
swam - nothing.

Now a new week and a new life has started. It is still hard for me to believe he is gone. A void exists in my heart now, a place that only he filled, and anytime I have done anything physical since his passing, he has been constantly in my thoughts. Usually I break out in laughter more often than tears when I remember him, his life, his stories, his fits. My dad pitched the biggest fits of anybody who ever lived, but he was not mean, he never directed his anger towards us only towards the things that irritated him. Once when I was a boy, he was in the backyard and a blue jay flew down and pecked him on top of his head causing some pretty amazing wounds. He became so enraged that he went inside, retrieved his shotgun, and began to shoot up the back yard, the trees, the sky. Really, you can't make this stuff up. The police came out and had a little discussion with Pop, but he didn't go to jail. There was nobody like him, ever, and I am full of those kinds of stories, stories of him going ballistic over the minutest of aggravations. Those kind of things bothered my mother and my sister, but I enjoyed them, especially as I got older. Now I can pull up his memory any time, any place and get a chuckle, even a deep belly laugh by rembering one of his tantrums. God bless you, Roger Hodge.

AquaMan Runs into the Night and Remembers His Dad

Although he was very old, his passing was as big a shock to me as the bombing of the World Trade Center and the collapse of the Berlin Wall all rolled into one. How could he die? How could he? He was too tough, too stubborn, too busy.

My younger sister, Carol, called me just as I was departing my Comp II class at MDCC’s Greenwood Center. In fact, a couple of my students had asked about him shortly before, and we spent a few minutes chatting about Roger Hodge. When I answered my phone, I heard my sister, hysterical and unintelligible, trying to say something. After several attempts to speak, someone else talked over her phone: “Come to your mom’s house right now!”

I was frightened and confused. Why was she there and not at the hospital? Mom must have died and they called the house. When I got to Harding Street, I saw an ambulance in front of Mom's and my confusion deepened. I walked, ran through the front door and someone I didn’t know pointed towards the den. “He’s back there.”

I remember the paramedics working on him, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, about seeing it. He lay on the floor while strangers did chest compressions. It was not a pleasant sight, and I am thankful to God my mother did not witness that. I was in a bit of a shock while my sister wept hysterically in another room. I dropped to my knees beginning to pray but was interrupted by someone asking for help, for another entrance or exit from the house. They put him on a spine board and carried him out to a gurney.

I remember the doctor at the hospital coming into the room where my sister and I and Mom and Dad’s next door neighbors sat in anxiety. We were joined at some point by Bro. Brad Hodges but I don’t remember when. Neither do I remember what the doctor said, but whatever the words may have been, his meaning was unmistakable. Dad was gone. In a moment, without warning, the man who took life by the throat, turned it upside down, and shook it until the pennies fell out of its pockets was dead.

I had to notify our siblings, an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Quinton. Words were hard to come by and get out and for my brother, difficult to process. “What do you mean he didn’t make it?” he asked in confusion or disbelief. “He’s gone, Quinton.” “What do you mean he’s gone? I just talked to him.” My silence and soft sobbing finally cleared his confusion.

I had to tell Mom, who lay ill in a hospital room upstairs, unaware that her husband of sixty-one years had departed for the other side ahead of her. I had to comfort my sister, or try to. I had to tell a nurse downstairs what funeral home to take the body. I had to call some of Dad’s friends, some of whom I didn’t want to hear this news from a second or third hand source. I had to find a way to wrap my head around his passing.

Later that evening, I went to work, to teach my night class because I thought I would manage better there, busy, not just sitting at home being sad. I also thought it was what my dad would have wanted. He was kind of big on work. Back when Mom was so sick and my sister and I spent a few months in hospitals, he told us both that he appreciated everything we had done, but we needed to go to work. “Work is important,” he said. Those weren’t hollow words, but actions he had modeled for us our entire lives. He modeled a lot of things for me, for us, and he left a legacy I will always cherish, a legacy of health, activity, and work that I hope in some way to emulate.  

People didn’t run in those days. Not many people, but Dad did. By “those days,” I haven’t even done the math, but I’m fifty-seven and when I was eight years old Dad got me up every morning and we ran. He would spot me to the stop sign at Harding and Taylor Drive, a distance of about a quarter of a mile. He always caught me, passed me, but finished only a little before me. He had it worked out that way. Someone may have called the police one time after becoming alarmed at a little boy running from a grown man early in the morning. Like I said, people didn’t run in those days. Not around Greenwood, Mississippi anyway.

I thought about that when I got off work from my night class, changed into my running shoes, booted my Garmin watch and headed out the door after first hugging my forlorn wife. I crossed over to Cherokee Street, ran up Cleveland, then over to Taylor Drive. Taylor ends in a cul-de-sac so the traffic is always light there and in the dark I was free to be taken captive by my thoughts. The anonymity the darkness provided made me feel free to tear up, wipe my face, sob if need be.

He was always fit and when people did run, when the running boom hit in the 80s, he was ready. We, my brother, my dad, and I, ran road races all over the northern and central part of the state. Dad dominated his age division for about a decade and a half. When he was fifty-five years old, he ran a 38:55 10K, a time I have never approached. He was just tough, fit, and unafraid to leave it all on the road.

He also skipped rope, but not the store bought kind with handles on it but the sort you tie something up with. I remember him carrying that rope sometimes when we ran at night. We usually ran in the morning, but for some reason when we ran at night he had the rope.

He played tennis for years and years and years. I used to tease him that he and his buddies would be out on the tennis court one day with their rackets duct taped to their walkers. That almost came to pass. His group played at least twice per week until they weren’t a group anymore, until death took them one by one, until they were all gone. Dad was the last one alive, and through this process of dealing with my emotions after his passing, I came to realize that deep down I believed he would never die, that he would live forever.

He hunted quail, “birds” around here, always having well-trained dogs, and he killed around 250 to 300 a year for decades until the declining bird population and the affects of age gradually took their toll. But he kept going. He just kept going. Somewhere along the way, I quit asking him how many he killed. The question became first, “How many did you see?” and then, “Did you see one?” Eventually, his yearly harvest of birds came down to single digits, to being countable on one hand. But he kept loading his dog in his truck and going. He just kept going. He hunted so often and walked so much that he wore the toes out of RedWing boots and his dogs looked like starving strays, their tails bloody from wagging through the bush.

He bought land in Carroll County when I was just a little boy and built a cabin. Before that we camped, but with the cabin we spent the night under a roof and then got up early to squirrel hunt before cutting firewood after the hunt and listening to Jack Cristil call the Mississippi State games over the radio. He never lost his passion for State, and I really thought that if he ever did die it would happen while watching one of those games. I’ve never seen anyone get so wound up over football. The passing of years following his graduation from State in 1950 and season after season of losing did little, nothing, to quell his passion for his school.

I shuffled my way down and back on Taylor Drive and then to Grand Blvd. I turned left on “the boulevard,” as we call it here, and headed north. Usually I can’t think very well when I run. This night was different and my mind never idled but kept pace with my feet as I ran the road’s median.

He planted gardens, way more than needed to supplement his family’s food. He was the last of a generation of people who farmed with mules and picked cotton by hand and lived the old way. That never left him and the acreage in Carroll County provided him the opportunity to extend his youth and expose his children to the rigors of his boyhood. I hated the hoeing and picking and shelling, but he seemed to revel in it. As he got older, he kept doing that too, planting way more than needed and then calling his family in to help him put up corn “to get ready for winter.” Last year, he bought another freezer to have more room to put up more corn and peas that he and Mom could never eat. There was plenty of corn already in the freezer, but he had to “get ready for winter.” He just kept doing it.

At the north end of the boulevard, I turned east and then zigged and zagged through the dark streets of North Greenwood. I heard a few crickets chirping and occasionally a dog barked, but mostly I heard voices, or a voice, my father’s.

He loved to fish but when I was a little, a fishing trip was always preceded by a trip to the place to “check on the garden.” Only after a good dose of hand blisters, sunburn, and dehydration did he feel free to have some fun. Then we would go to a hill pond and fly fish or bass fish for the rest of the day. Although those trips were grand fun and made great memories, I always wondered why we couldn’t just fish. Maybe he was trying to teach me the valuable lesson of 'duty before pleasure,’ but in that regard I am poorly learned.

When I grew up and left home, fishing became trips to Louisiana where he eventually kept a little camper and fished the surf and marshes and blessed his family and friends with the harvest of his hobby, with speckled trout. He kept a record of every fish he ever caught except for the rare occasion when someone caught more than he. Once, I got lucky and beat him at Grand Isle, and he never could remember how many fish we took that day. He was competitive like that. He got old, but he just kept going. He kept making trips to Louisiana well into his 80s. I think it was just two years ago that he decided that was no longer a part of his life. I remember thinking how mature and sensible that was of him.

Still the shadow of his legacy began to cast its shade over me long before he left us. Like him, I am no good with moderation: too much is not enough. When it comes to athletics, unlike him, I am a poor performer, but like him I am driven to try and try and try. I can’t seem to slow down even when it is in my best interest to do so. I battled Achilles tendon problems for a little over four years, but like him I kept heading out the door, I just kept doing it.

I inherited not only his desire for life but also his insatiable appetite for food. Unlike him, however, my metabolism eventually slowed enough that I could no longer eat whatever whenever and not suffer the consequences. If he ever slowed in that regard, I failed to notice. He just kept doing it. He was a snacker always munching on something: peanuts, chips, cheese and crackers, smoked sardines, something. But if he ever failed to eat a big meal after snacking, I didn’t notice. Once he had an ulcer and the doctors scoped his digestive tract. They were shocked to find the largest stomach they had ever examined housed within that small-statured, aging man. Didn’t surprise me at all.

Not only did he work hard, play hard, eat hard, but he cooked hard as well. Like many men, he loved to grill, to cook outdoors. Fish, steaks, ribs, and chicken were his specialties, but I think chicken was his best. No fancy grill for him, though. He laid out a little rectangle of 8 X 8 X 16 inch concrete blocks, draped a piece of dog wire over it and cooked on the ground using a #2 wash tub as a covering. No joke, I not only have the memories, but photographic evidence exists that this is actually true.

He did everything in huge measure and squeezed every day for all the experience he could ring from it. He hunted and gardened and fished and cooked and ate. He also loved. I think that part of him gets overlooked, overshadowed by his tremendous temper which was never turned towards people but only towards inanimate objects and situations. Like his mother, he was not affectionate, but he loved. He loved to cook for his family. He loved to have us around. He loved to help us anyway he could. He just loved.

And then he died. I really didn’t believe it would ever happen, but I guess as someone said, “God is right nine times out of ten.” The Bible says, “It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.” To my surprise, I see now that applies even to Roger Hodge.

I made my way back across the boulevard to West Monroe Street and slowed to a walk when I got within a quarter of a mile from the house. It was quiet out, besides the chirping crickets and barking dogs, but I’m not sure I could have heard much else anyway. My heart rate and respiration steadily dropped as I slowly strolled towards home. My run was over, but my thoughts were not. I realized my memories and meditation on his life, on life, were not over but just beginning. That, I think, is a good thing.