Visit to Clarks Hill, 2008

These are the Veterans of the Clarks Hill area, assembled before the Veterans Program in front of the Hosanna Baptist Church. That's the 92 year old Mrs. Scott in the beautiful red dress at the far left.

This is going to be a hard story to write. Not because it is sad or anything like that, but because it is so hard to define the feelings from being where I was and doing what I was doing. I just got home yesterday afternoon and I am still buzzing and trying to pin down the emotions from the experience.

Last year at this time, Barb and I went to Clarks Hill, SC and attended a Veterans program at the Bethany Baptist Church. Bethany is the boyhood parish of my friend, Frazier Dixon. Frazier and I served together in Vietnam and I was with him when he was killed in action on December 3, 1969. I returned to Clarks Hill last year and met the friends and family and it was a very very hearty healing experience for all involved.


It's on the map!

This year, I was invited down there again. I wanted to return. I brought them an Eagle feather in a display case and a flag that was flown in memorium for my friend. There were some people that I didn’t get to meet last year. They found out about my visit too late and didn’t make it. This year, I stayed four days and three nights and got to meet some key relatives that I desperately wanted to meet.

Anthony Morgan, Frazier’s best friend from high school, paid for three nights lodging for us at the Marriott. That was a very nice thing to do. We were going to stay at a local LaQuinta motel. To ease the burden of having to pay for lodging allowed us to stay longer. The fine folks and other Veterans that attended the program also pitched in and gave us an envelope with some cash for gas and expenses. What unbelievable thoughtfulness. All of this generosity was a beautiful gesture on their part.

They made me feel like a hero. Like I was doing something special. Maybe I did expend effort to drive down there, but it was them that provided me with healing by their friendship and acceptance of me and my family as their own.

We drove down in three segments. Wednesday evening for a few hours just to get some miles under our belts, then a long day Thursday covering about 700 miles. We had a short day friday as we rolled in to Augusta, GA about 3:00 p.m. We checked in on a day when the rain and fog had covered the city like a blanket.

Friday night, we were suppose to go to Mrs. Scott’s North Augusta, GA home and see her gardens. She is proud of her gardening skills, and at 92 years of age still feeds herself and friends with the vegetables she grows. She is an inspiration. She is responsible for putting on the Veterans program for the Veterans in the community at her own expense. It was so foggy, that we did not go driving around but instead, just met Shirley Luke, our friend and contact, and had a nice casual dinner at the S&S Cafeteria.

Shirley stayed at her mother’s place in Clarks Hill, we returned to the Marriott where the kids swam in the indoor pool. Barb and I relaxed in the hot tub to soothe the tightness of our muscles from the long drive.

Saturday, I paid a visit to the grave site of my friend. Last year, I saw the site needed some repair as the concrete top was crumbling. I mentioned sending money down to help with the cost of repairs, but nothing was said about my offer. Low and behold, when I get down there, the whole thing was redone. New landscaping and a much needed brightening of the headstone. Mrs. Scott had been responsible for the expense of having the site upgraded and it looked great.


The dam on the Savannah River. Once called the Clarks Hill Dam, the official name is now the J. Strom Thurmond Dam. This is about 15 miles North of Augusta, Georgia

After the cemetery visit, we went to the Clarks Hill lake and dam and walked around a bit. We had some time to kill before the program started at 3:00 p.m. They renamed the Clarks Hill dam. It is called the J. Strom Thurmond lake and dam now, but the locals will forever know it as the Clarks Hill dam. I am in that camp. Thurmond doesn’t deserve the moniker in my opinion.

The Veterans program played to a full house at the Hosanna Baptist Church. The Bethany Church was undergoing roof replacement. Hosanna offered the site for this years event. I met with several Veterans from the previous year. I remembered most of them and they remembered me. I also got to meet Frazier’s sister. When the family was young, the Mom divorced and remarried. Her new husband moved the family to Philadelphia. Frazier wanted to stay in Clarks Hill, so he stayed with his Grandfather and two cousins, Dan and Lois. The sister, Shirley, and other siblings went north. Frazier was raised largely by his Grandfather and aunt.

Shirley was there and we met for the first time. Like many of the people from the area, she didn’t know what to believe as far as what the Army told them. The casket was sealed, so they never saw a body. Many believed Frazier could possible be alive as a prisoner of war or just missing in action. Amazing was the distrust in believing what the Army officials told them about his death.

It wasn’t until I came along last year that they learned the entire truth of what happened that fateful night in December on a battlefield in Vietnam. I was there with Frazier the night he was killed. I saw him alive, then saw him dead. It was this first hand account that meant so much for the family and friends to hear. They were in disbelief for all these years. I believed it, but never made sense of it as I never know anything of his existence other than as a soldier in the American war in Vietnam.

I also met Dan, the cousin he grew up with, and Lois, Dan’s sister. I had met other cousins and neighbors of this small tight knit community a year earlier. Dan and I talked a lot. Dan needed the closure and asked me some pretty pressing questions, but I swallowed my own pain and relived some of that night to soothe his mind and give him answers to questions he had struggled with for almost 40 years.

At the program, I was asked to speak a little. I kept it brief, but I did have this Eagle feather to give to the community. A spiritual Elder I know from Wisconsin gave me this feather to give to them. He told me that the feather was symbolic of the Warrior Spirit of my friend, and by giving them this feather, I was returning his spirit back to them as I was with him when he died and holding it with me for many years.

I put the feather in a case and presented it to them along with a flag, also in a wooden case, folded in the traditional triangle style. The flag was flown at a Native American Pow Wow in Northern Minnesota at an honoring ceremony in August. After last year, I was able to fly Frazier’s flag. Before that, I guess I just wasn’t ready to fly it and see his spirit wave goodbye. I felt I needed to hold on to his spirit. I didn’t know why, but found out that I was holding on to it because I had to return it to Clarks Hill. After last year, I was able to complete the mission and say goodbye to my friend.

Now, for the really good part, we ate a magnificent banquet in the church dining hall. Fried chicken, peach cobbler, baked mac n’ cheese, green beans, stuffing with gravy, along with red velvet cake with a cream cheese pecan frosting that was to die for! The dinner was very nice and we sat around for a couple of hours talking and growing friendships.

We returned to the Marriott and spent the rest of the evening in a haze after the days activities. Sunday had us up and walking around the old downtown of Augusta, Georgia. It was a cool morning, but a bright sunny day. After a brief swim in the hotel pool, we went back to Clarks Hill lake and dam and walked around there a little and went to the visitor center.


The lovely Mrs. Spadoman at lakeside.

At 1:30 p.m , we met Shirley Luke at Sam Marshall’s little grocerette/bait and tackle, and anything you might need store on the highway. I met Sam at the program and he was glad to see us on his turf as he invited us to stop in at the store the day before. Shirley came and we followed her to Dew Drop Inn Road. We turned into the woods on Dew Drop Inn, and went just a short 1/4 mile or so and came into view of a bunch of houses. They were scattered around, not in order like a suburban development, and faced this way and that. The dirt road was wide and narrow. Kids were outside playing, people standing around here and there. Smoke coming from chimneys as the day experienced a cold front as winter reminded us all that is was near.


The Grandkids, DJ and Anna, at Clarks Hill Lake.

This year, we took the two oldest Grandkids with us. It was a joy to have them with.We went to Debra’s house first. Debra is Frazier’s first cousin and lived in the house next to where Frazier grew up. Debra has eleven bothers and sisters. Five of the sisters still live on Dew Drop Inn. We went from house to house. Some had food and we ate. Some just were at home. As we went from house to house, a few joined our troop and we walked to the spring where the water was retrieved in an earlier time. We went ot the washing hole where laundry was done. It came alive and I could see it all.

And the food! Greens, greens with okra, pork hocks, fried chicken, barbequed chicken, sweet potatoes, baked mac and cheese, corn bread, sweet tea. Man, I ate and ate. We talked about each others lives as we explained the differences between the cultures and the North and South. I told them that I cooked Italian food in those large quantities at one time in my life. I fed the family too. We agreed that next time I come down there, I’d get a kitchen to cook and I would make a real authentic spaghetti and meatball dinner for all of dew Drop Inn.

That’s when I got invited to the Family Reunion which is due to take place next July Fourth weekend in 2009. I wondered if they were kidding, but they meant it. We are invited if we want to be there. I can’t quite explain the feeling of being there, in this enclave, of family and distant relatives, all living and sharing their food and their lives with us and each other. This was no special dinner, this was everyday life. That's what made it so great. We were treated just like family with no pretending. One sister will cook one day, another will cook the next. people from the houses were coming and going. Some would eat a plateful right there, others would wrap up some food and take it home. This is real community and not at all unlike the Native communities in Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, or my own family in an earlier time.

I came away determined to start a tradition and cook my Mother’s recipe of Italian “gravy”. The red sauce, with spaghetti and meatballs. Sausage, lamb shanks and neck bones along with good bread and salad. I’ll do it once a month an I’ll be starting this weekend on Sunday.

To be there and share this repast. To be there and be accepted like kin is an experience that is indescribable to me. As it happened, I sat there and soaked it all in. There were so many hugs from so many people and so many “Drop in any time” invitations. Bob will take me fishing, Les will fix my car. Debra and her sisters will be cooking so there is no way a person would starve.

All in all, another year has passed. Another fabulous trip to the boyhood home of a man that I met in Vietnam on the battlefield. What a journey this life has to offer if we are willing to make it.

Many years ago, I embarked on a healing path and didn’t know what to expect or if anything at all was to be expected. The healing has come and it continues. It is out there for all of us. We need patience and faith in something. I am a lucky man for all of this to happen to me in a few short days. And they tell me they are the lucky ones to have met me. What an honor, what an experience. It can never be duplicated, but I can relive it, moment by moment each and every day.


Yours truly with Anna at Clarks Hill Lake.

Thanks for listening to my story. May peace and love touch you all in some way.

Time to Travel

The time has come to take a trip. As I did last year, I'll travel to Clarks Hill, SC. The return visit will be as special as the first time I went there, which was Last Year. It will be special for a number of reasons.

My two oldest Grand children will join me along with the spousal unit, Mrs. Spadoman. We traveled with the kids last Summer and they proved they can be good. Good for an eight year old and a ten year old. I guess it's me and the missus that they might worry about. We have embarrassed them in the past. But they'll get over it.

The fine folks down in Clarks Hill, friends and family of my Veteran Brother Frazier Dixon, have invited us to stay at the Marriot in Augusta, GA. That will be some nice plush accommodations. It was very nice and super generous of them to give us the lodging.

I have a special gift to bring down there for the community to share this year. I was given an Eagle feather by a Spiritual Elder that I know and trust. He tells me he saw it in a dream, me giving them this feather, and that it would represent the Warrior Spirit that I have returned to the community. I framed it and I will present it to them during the Veterans Program.

I also flew a flag at a Pow Wow last August. The flag was symbolic of the deceased
Veteran and was flown in a memorial Veterans song that was sung, honoring all Veterans who gave of themselves. I bought a case for that flag and I will present that to them as well.


This is at the Flag Raising ceremony last August. My friend Mike, also a Veteran, helped me fly this memorial flag.

We'll be leaving here on Wednesday and arriving in Augusta on Friday. We'll spend three nights there and start back on Monday. We'll pass through Chicago on the way home and visit my Mother for one overnight. She will love to see the kids.

The route I'll take down there might be a little squared off. I want to drive through as many states as I can. The kids want them for their resume. After last years trip to Washington DC, they added quite a few states, that they have been to, to their accomplishments. This trip will add a few more. I am thinking of getting them one of those US maps that people put on the side of their RV and then fill the spaces with stickers or magnets of the states. They could mount it in their room and as we travel to different places, they can fill the spaces with the magnets.


Wouldn't this look nice and colorful for a kids room?
I want one!!

As they get older and we have these travel experiences, I am likely to want to take them to more places and show them the wonders I have had the luxury to have seen in my travels throughout my life. Last Summer to the East coast, maybe this Summer to the West. I better watch out. I want to take an epic motorcycle journey through Canada to Alaska on the bike. It could happen that I would return from that and load up the van and take the kids to Grand Canyon, LA, San Francisco, the Redwoods and the Ocean and without blinking an eye log in 15,000 miles of highway time.

I sure could think of worse ways to spend retirement. Like in a lazYboy watching infomercials. Did you see the new power scrubber? I mean two of em' for $19.95 (plus S&H), and you get ten free exchangable cleaning heads.


A Tennessee hillside last November on our way to South Carolina.

So, I hope you'll miss me. I'll be gone for about two weeks altogether. I'm sure I'll enjoy the warmer weather as I am going to the South, and the trees might have some color on them. Here, the blustery winds and rain of the past few days has pretty much left the streets and lawns with a mat of yellow, waiting for a good opportunity to get the rake out there and pile them up in bags for removal. Fall is over. Winter is here. We had snow twice now, both times it 'stuck' and showed up on the car windows, then melted away by late afternoon. One of these days it will become three feet deep. White Christmas anyone?

Peace to all of you.

"My Life Is Not My Own"

Since I returned from Washington DC in July, I have been going non stop. It seems every time I get a break, I get a call or there is some other function that I have an opportunity to attend. I know I can say, “No”, and I have done so, but most of these things I want to do.

I remember a couple of years ago when I was cooking at the Sundance. I loved to do it, but it consumed me in many ways. Yet I look back and still try to recreate in my everyday life those quiet mornings, right at sunrise, when the dew was moist and the haze of the morning was just lifting. The sandhill cranes would fly around and speak to me. It always seemed like I was the only one alive.

Usually, the leader of the ceremony would wander over to the cook tent with his coffee mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I’d see him coming and I’d wipe the wetness off a chair for him and look around for the pot holder so I could pour him a cup of the rich strong coffee from the big pot, the one on the fire.

This one day, he sat down and took a drag on the smoke, nodded a “Thank you” when I poured his coffee and started to speak.

“My life is not my own.” He said.

He went on and spoke about the hardships of having a life of your own when the people asked you and expected you to be there for them. People as in family members, community members and friends. Chris is a Medicine Man. A Spiritual Elder and leader of the Dakota people. He lives on the Prairie Island reservation near Red Wing, Minnesota.

He sometimes wants to go fishing, or just have a day to himself. Some time to just relax, take a nap or watch mindless TV. He would like to not have to take the next trip to South Dakota or Japan or where ever to perform what ever ritual, healing or ceremony. He doesn’t have that option and he accepts his path, totally.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t wish it would have been otherwise and this one summer morning he mentioned it to me over a cup of joe and a butt. I listened. For some reason, the words stuck in my brain and recall him often. I have been so busy since last October that I recall him a lot and wonder if the same is true for me and my life, that it is not my own.

It never really was my own. I thought it was. I thought I had control. I thought that of all the free spirits, I was freer than most. I traveled a lot and have had many experiences that some folks just think or dream about. Yet we really never control anything, least of all, our path in life.

Last year, I agreed to house sit for a friend who went to Nicaragua for three months. That started October 27th. I moved out of my own home and moved in to a strangers place. I had my bag that disguised as a suitcase and a dopp kit. Does anyone know what a dopp kit is? Anyway, I have one and I have been living out of it since October 27 of 2007.

At the end of the three months, January 27th, the home owner was due to return and she did. But instead of moving back home and unpacking my dopp kit, I moved into my 1991 Ford E-150 conversion van and headed in a generally Westerly direction. I traveled to Arizona and visited family, then to Northern California and visited friends that are more like family than the family is. After that, I went to San Francisco and joined the Longest Walk.

I was on The Walk for almost two full months. I got sick and tried to recuperate but just had beaten myself into the ground as I worked to accomplish the goal. I know no other way of living life. No other way than to immerse myself fully into what I am doing and in this case, it was being a Go-To guy with the Longest Walk.

I realized that I am disabled. I haven’t had a job for wages in quite some time. What made me think I could go on the Longest Walk and work like I did and just because I wasn’t earning any money, that I would be capable of doing it? Work is work, paid or not, and I just about killed myself trying to do what I couldn’t really do. It was a friend I talked to on the phone who reminded me that I am not the person I used to be. I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I just didn’t think about it for one minute.

I returned home after two months and stayed around the house. I was tired and slept a lot. I was very sick and needed to get stronger and return to being healthy and that took about a month. I went back to The Walk for a week when they were in Oklahoma. At that time, I let the leader, Dennis Banks, talk me into returning and I did so when The Walk was in Baton Rouge, LA.

I drove down to Louisiana and stayed with them for another month. When we reached Northern Alabama, I headed North for home once again. I lied to them and told them I’d be back in two weeks when I knew I wasn’t planning on going back to The Walk until they were in Washington DC on July 11th.

While at home, I participated in The Crow Creek Motorcycle Ride. I was a prime force with planning and implementation of that event as well as a motorcycle rider. After the Crow Creek ride, my friend and I continued on our bikes for another 1200 or so miles of joy riding, enjoying fine weather and scenery on uncrowded North and South Dakota roads.

I left to rejoin The Walk early in July. I planned a stop with the family near Chicago to visit my Mother. I had four of the Grandkids with me when I traveled and with the visit to Chicago, returning to The Longest Walk for the last few days in Washington and the other vacation activities we did while on the road with the kids, well, I didn’t get home again for two weeks.

When I did get home, it was right back on the road for the 300 mile trip to the Sundance. I didn’t make the full 11 days this year and didn’t cook, but I was there for four days and helped the cook on the last day when a feast needed to be prepared. I returned home on July 19th.

On the 20th, I get a call from one of the Longest Walkers. She was in Minneapolis and needed a place to stay. She, along with her friend, a guy she seemed to be in love with at the time, stayed at my place. Using the floor in the spare bedroom. Along with them, there were other visitors from The Walk. The Japanese interpreter and her boyfriend. They stayed at my place for a few days, but when she got sick with a kidney infection, my friend Steve let them have a regular furnished bedroom at his place.

While she recovered, I saw them daily. After a while, she left to return to Japan and her friend went back to Lexington, KY to start work. The others left and joined the small town moving carnival show somewhere in rural Minnesota.

I was glad. It looked like I finally would have some peace and quiet and nothing on the schedule. I was wrong. I got another call from yet another friend i made on The Walk. She would be in town and her and her boyfriend didn’t stay at my house, but we went out to dinner and visited for a time.

Between all these things, I had to travel to Ashland, WI for ceremonies and to visit friends I have neglected for the past few months as I was on the road. At last, peace and quiet, until my sister and Mother came to visit. My sister asked if I could keep my Mom here with me while she and her husband took a short vacation. I agreed and my Mother came for a two week visit. I bought a proper bed and installed it in the spare room instead of putting her on the floor or sofa. Just the respect shown to an Elder. I think the other guests that stayed at my place were okay on the floor and the sofa.

Then, I get another call from yet another friend from The Walk. They are in town and I will met them for breakfast. One of them returned home and the other, finding himself with a need for a place to stay, asked if I could help him out. Of course I let him stay at my house. He’d do the same for me.

Then, the Veterans For Peace National Convention was in town and I had agreed to be a volunteer and help with the hosting chores on behalf of our Local 27 Chapter. During that time, I met a fellow blogger from the API blog who is a Veteran and traveled here for the VFP convention with her husband and other friends. Immediately on the heels of that was the four day RNC extravaganza and the massive war protest activities that took place right in my own back yard.

My friend stayed through the RNC and got arrested. I couldn’t help him out as I was in Ashland helping another friend with his wedding over the weekend. It was a traditional Native ceremony and I was honored to have been asked to be a helper.

Now, I just completed a four day drive to Northern California and will be visiting friends here. They had a death in the family, their daughter, and I have been wanting to come here and tell them I love them since it happened.

To say I’ve been busy is a gross understatement. But I wanted to explain where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. I went to read some blogs last week and I posted a comment on one of them. They were surprised to see me. They thought I left the blogosphere for good!
‘
I tell you, I can’t wait for those short daylight days of winter and the cold and just crawling around the house in my Homer Simpson pajama bottoms. I’ll do some writing then and actually say something meaningful. I can tell you about the visits and the meals and the ceremonies and the functions.

Until then, “My life is not my own”.

I guess that old man knew what he was telling me. I never get over the idea of how he knew I needed to learn that lesson.

In the meantime, be well and stay safe in all you do. Practice peace.

Happy New Year, From 2008

A visitor from the Deer Nation to the Cabinette.

It is just another day to me, really. There is no significant reason to celebrate it in my mind. I am so glad that I am much more in tune to Nature and the Universe than I am to the calendar and clock. Yesterday evening, while driving to an event, I watched the sun setting in the Southwest. Up here, way up North in Wisconsin, the sun rises and sets South of the Equator and that means a sunrise and set way down in the Southern sky, hence the longer periods of darkness.

I'll watch, and soon Ole Sol will make its way back and be North and stay out shining and lighting our way until close to 10 p.m. All the daylight savings time discussion means nothing either for that matter. The clock will say 10 p.m., but it will have been light for over 18 hours. Now, we barely get eight hours of sunlight.

I can see the reasons and harbor no malice towards New Year. I just go on living. Many enterprises go into reflection. I'm seeing this on some blogs , on the news, in the paper. "The Year In Review" is the story byline. Review what already happened. Look back and have a reminder of sadness in the world? That's the news.


Gracie and her Papa, having a good time.

A new family member that was born into our family, Gracie Jayne, happened in calendar year 2007. I want to see her walking in 2008. I want to be alive to see it, witness it. I don't need to remember she was born last year even though it was a very happy and miraculous event. I see her, a human being. I know she is here.


Gracie Jayne, soon to be one year, visiting with Onawah at the kitchen window.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't a gloom and doom piece here. This is just my take on it. All the dot org's are doing their level best to get me to shell out some moola before the end of the calendar year. I'm fucking broke. The fucking holidays and the fucking pickup truck repairs took all my fucking money. What makes True Majority, Move On and Amnesty International think I need a fucking tax deduction? Don't they know their base is poor people. Why would the rich want any change in the policies of king bush? They are getting richer off of it as the peons suffer and pay higher everything. Gas, food, utilities, the basics, but give them money to combat these things. What a dichotomy.

I had the pleasure and honor of attending a Sweat Lodge last night. It was in honor of the soon to be January Moon. The Moon of Popping Trees. It's so cold the trees seem to "PoP". They do make noises. Ever hear the ice on a lake freeze? It is a sound like no other. No, it is like the cry of a whale, sort of. It is natural. The lake is talking to you like the whale is speaking as well.

The leader told us that the Elders used the Winter and the long nights to tell stories. he said in the Ojibwe culture, their history is oral. The stories were passed down and told, sometimes over and over, and then repeated as the ones who heard the first version grew into eldership. Last night, I was recognized as an Elder and a Warrior and I told my story to the younger people there. I told them about being a Warrior and my journey to South Carolina to return the Spirit of my Brother in Arms to his people. I told them how I truly believed that I was guided on this path to have this happen. I told of the signs, the eagles, the way things dropped into place, the healing that happened, the closure. I was proud to tell this story and was proud to tell it to people who sat and listened, or at least were polite about it all and didn't interrupt me.

This ceremony was held in the woods behind a place called Mishomis House. Mishomis means Grand Father in the Anishanabe language, the voice of the Ojibwe, or Chippewa people. It is a program house for people with alcohol and drug addictions. New years was a usual time to drink maybe a little more than they usually drank. We try to hold a Lodge ceremony around New Years Eve as a motivator and inspiration for those that suffer from these addictions. We hold the ceremony, then go on living. I had my New Years "party" at that Lodge, so to speak.


The Great Lake Superior. A view through the woods at the cabinette.


I’ll fool around here at home today and tomorrow with my new Cassette Tape Archiver. A really neat device that will allow me to make all my old cassettes into CD’s and MP3 files for the iPod. Cool, heh? All that great music has been sitting in a milk crate. Now it will be resurrected and listened to instead of just recalled in conversations.

“I have this great cassette of the Who doing “Tommy” at Radio City Music Hall from 1972” I would say.

“Oh man, that would be awesome to hear that” my friend would respond.

“You got a tape deck?” I’d ask.

“No, mine broke years ago and I never bought another one. Everything went to CD’s” He’d say.

“Damn, too bad” says I.

Maybe I’ll watch Pirates of the Caribbean III again. I like that fantasy stuff if it has pirates in it. Maybe I’ll watch the whole trilogy. Or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I love that movie too.

What ever you do, do it well. If this is a step for a new beginning for you, this New Year, then do that well too. It's a leap year, so, you'll have an extra day on your calendar in case you make a mistake. A Mulligan on life, cool concept. But there are always thirteen moons in a year.

We’ll be moving back into the Cabinette in a few weeks. I can’t wait. We’re getting ready for that. It will be a change from living in this cozy house in town. But it’s not a resolution or anything like that. It’s just our home, and I’ll be glad to return to it, cold and snow or not. I did get to lay up a lot of fire wood, so I’m ready. I can see myself now, a warm fire. My tape deck belting out the old stuff as I edit and catalogue my “new” CD collection and add it to the rest. I’ll need to buy another case and one of those stacks of CD/RW’s for all the recording. A good vision of how to spend Winter at the Cabinette.

In the meantime. Have a good New Year. This year, every year, every day of every year, for you and all you hold dear.

And Peace to All in the Universe.


Mr. and Mrs. Spadoman.

A Greeting to All, From 2007

However you celebrate, or if you don't celebrate at all, we wish you peace in your hearts for you and all you hold dear. We send constant positive energy out to the world and will stand in honor of all of you who wish for peace today at the Ashland Peace Vigil. I ask the Creator to let us understand each other and accept all mankind as their Brothers and Sisters.

Thank you for your support. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, May peace prevail on the Sacred Earth Mother for all.

Trip to Clarks Hill, 2007

The bridge at Mackinac



Back at home this morning. I didn’t keep track of how many miles and miles per gallon. This was a different kind of trip. A trip I was going to take no matter what the logistical outcome. It wasn’t a matter of could I afford it, but rather how I would afford it.

We left Ashland last Wednesday morning. We drove across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and crossed the Mackinaw bridge. We took Interstate 75 South down to US Highway 23. We followed 23 all the way down through Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and into North Carolina. We used another road, Interstate 26 through North Carolina down into South Carolina and ended up using two-lane State and County roads to weave our way into Augusta, Georgia.

We stayed in Augusta, but our destination was a scant 12 miles North of there, just across the Savannah River, to a small town called Clarks Hill in South Carolina. The Savannah River is damned at Clarks Hill and makes a lake that used to be called Clarks Hill Lake. It is now called Strom Thurmond Lake after the long time Senator from South Carolina. Local residents, and I, will know it as Clarks Hill Lake and the Clarks Hill Dam.

We got there on Friday in the late afternoon. I called the contact number I had, a woman named Shirley who had found my name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall website. I had written there in the guest book for my friend, Frazier Dixon. Frazier was killed in Vietnam on December 3, 1969. I was there when he died, with him, touched him.

Shirley was looking for information about a fallen member of the community of Clarks Hill. Shirley lives near Atlanta now, but her Mother still lives in Clarks Hill. She went to school there and knew Frazier Dixon. When she contacted me, neither she nor I knew what was going to happen, but the contact was made. Now, I had come down to attend a Veterans Program that was being put on by an Elder and retired school teacher, Mrs. Scott.

Mrs. Scott has had this program for Veterans since 2002. She holds it at the Bethany Baptist Church in Clarks Hill. In the past years, attendance hasn’t been very high. Mrs. Scott felt that this would be her last year putting on the program since no one seemed to appreciate it. It is simple. A few songs, a few readings, a scripture and a feed after the Veterans announced themselves with a few words about what branch of service they were in and when they served.

When I heard that Shirley wanted to gather any information she could find about Frazier Dixon, to include him, in spirit, at the Veterans Program, I got interested in going down there and attending myself. What I hadn’t expected was the outpouring of humanity and emotion from the Bethany Baptist Church community in Clarks Hill.

When Shirley reported that I was coming there and that I knew Frazier in Vietnam and that I was his friend and that I was with him when he died, many faithful members of the church called others, family members of Frazier’s, school mates of Frazier’s. Other Veterans of the community, some that had never come to the Veterans Program before this, came out in force.

When I got there, I went to the cemetery which is on the hill, right behind the church. I walked around and spotted the cement slab covering and bronze flat headstone. Frazier’s name was there, big as life. I felt Like I had come full circle. It wasn’t all a dream at all. Sometimes I wondered about my own memory of Vietnam. Detached and so far away from it and with each year, I get farther away.


Grave site of a friend. Clarks Hill, South Carolina

I always wanted to tell somebody about it. About me knowing him. A number of years ago, when I wrote in that Wall website guest book, I did get contacted by a man named Claude. Claude wrote me and told me he knew the family of Frazier Dixon and that was all. Then, a phone call, from a man named James who told me he knew some of the family too. James on the phone and Claude in a letter. I wrote back to Claude and told him how I knew Frazier.

It was such an honor to meet Claude and James. They both remembered the contact. We figured it was in 2002. Claude had gotten copies of that letter and it was included in the scrapbook and album that Mrs. Scott had from the Veterans Programs of the years before. I got to read a letter I wrote in 2002.


Newest friend of the Spado family, Shirley, with James to her left and Claude farther left behind James, in the black jacket. Bethany Baptist dining hall. Veterans Program dinner.

It was an honor to meet all the people. Every single one of them. When it was my turn to speak, I told them that I had the spirit of Frazier Dixon with me for many years and that I was bringing him home. I wasn’t going to forget him. I was going to share him with them. Would you believe I got an “Amen” for that? What a feeling, for a Native American traditional spiritualist and recovering Catholic to get an Amen in a Baptist church in South Carolina?

I noticed that flowers seem to be on every grave at every cemetery in the South. As we drove, we saw oceans of flowers as we passed by cemetery plots. I bought a lawn base and an arrangement of seasonal silk flowers and put them next to the headstone of my friend at Bethany.

People started to arrive, and Shirley came. She is the only one I knew and I was waiting for her. She would introduce me to people. I knew her Mother would be there and a sister of hers. She also told me of a man who was Frazier’s best friend during high school. His name is Anthony.

I met Anthony first. And Anthony’s sister who was helping with the dinner. Then I met Shirley’s Mother and sister. Then I met several people all in a row. James, the guy I talked to on the phone and Claude, the man who wrote me years earlier. I met Deborah, one of Frazier’s first cousins. I met an Aunt and three other cousins. Other school mates and other members of the community that remembered Frazier. I met Mrs. Scott. Everyone seemed very excited that I was there.

I was excited to be there. As I sat in the church and the male choir group was singing, I had a feeling come over me that I can’t explain in any words known to mankind. What was I doing there? Why had I traveled through my lifetime, and now was receiving this gift of being with people that made me feel so welcome and warm? Like they knew me and had known me for a long time?


The Veterans who attended the Program at Bethany Baptist Church. Clarks Hill, SC November 17, 2007

After the program and through the dinner, I talked with so many people from Clarks Hill. A friend who described Frazier as being like a big brother to him and a cousin who remembered the military car in the driveway a long time ago. Those Veterans who knew him and knew he had died in combat action. They all wanted to know if it was true. After all these years, they knew he was dead, but they still hadn’t known, or believed, what the Army had told them. They didn’t believe the Army when they came and told them because the casket was sealed so tightly.

The casket was sealed shut. No pry bar or anything could have opened it. The Army delivered it this way, sealed, with a cement cover, cemented in place. I knew why it was sealed. It puzzled them for many years as no explanation can be remembered as given.

A month or two ago, I wrote some very personal memoirs about my time in Vietnam. I posted it as a four part series. I left it up for a while and then deleted it from the Round Circle Blog. In that four part post, I explained my involvement with Frazier Dixon. I explained why that casket was sealed. I never knew why I was ready to share that, but I was. Then, all this happens and I had to share it again. I didn’t want to go through the whole story in detail while visiting these old friends and family. I printed out the four part story and gave it to Shirley, she herself a Veteran by the way, and nodded my head as to why the casket was sealed and that he did die and that I was with him.

Some of the faces were disappointed, as if I was going to tell them that he was okay. Others, most of them, exhaled because they finally found out what happened and how he died, and they heard it from his friend, and not the Army. They used the word “Closure”. One man held my hand for five minutes as I stood there and held his back.

Deborah, his cousin, took us to the house, or where the house was, where Frazier grew up. We stood out in the road talking, six of us, where Grandma and Grandpa lived, by the ball field, on a road called Dew Drop Inn. I heard all about how Anthony and Frazier were liked by all the girls. I heard about how they’d walk to town and to Bethany for services.

We stood there talking, like the teens might have gathered, talking and laughing, many years ago.

I’d been to war as a young man. I held my friend when he died. 38 years, almost to the day, later, here I was. In his home town with the people who he went to school with, with his cousins, with his friends. I am so blessed by some power more significant than I can ever imagine. To be led here, at this time, in this life. To heal and be a healer, to let others be healers. To share smiles, brotherhood and love. Mending parts of my broken heart

Closure. Knowing that it’s okay now. Knowing we can let go of his spirit. Knowing he won’t be back because a friend came and told us so. I was the savior that day for so many, but they saved me as well. It was closure for me. To see his childhood, his relatives and friends. They know one of their own is gone and they reached out to touch me, a small part of him. I reached out to them.

Shirley has been great through all of this. She made us feel so welcome. Right from the start when we met her at the motel in Augusta. We went out to eat and had a special dinner. We talked on the phone. She even called as we traveled home to check our progress, telling us that everyone was praying for our safe travel. Telling me we were family now. We are part of Frazier’s community. Plans were being made for when I return. whether it be for next years Veterans Program, or for another trip I might want to make to come and visit. She gave me a fine gift, a plaque with the words of a song along with the CD of Bette Midler singing it, and gave Mrs. Spadoman a fine crystal bowl.

But more, she, and the others, gave me love. And closure. And I made new friends. And I have more family now. Mrs Scott, getting on in years and wondering why the attendance at the Veterans Program wasn’t very good, had said that this would be the last time she puts on the program. She changed her mind when that church and dining hall was full of people. She has decreed that she will have one next year. In itself, when a ninety one year old elder makes plans for an event next year, that means something.

We left Augusta, GA on Sunday morning and drove through Georgia and into Tennessee. Through Nashville and into Kentucky. Past Paducah and into Illinois. Right up the gut, and a night of sleep in Mt. vernon, we kept up the Northerly trek and landed in Ashland on Monday evening.

We ate BBQ and southern fried chicken. Boiled peanuts and fried pies. Fresh pink lady apples. I brought home country ham steaks, jam, jelly, hot chow chow, hot BBQ sauce and sorghum, which I plan on using soon on some buckwheat pancakes. That church dinner was good, too. I’ll never eat Macaroni n’ cheese without baking it to form a thick crust on top, ever again. And I’ll put some ham hocks in my green beans. And grits. I like grits.

We have Shirley on the speed dial. I have a card with addresses and phone numbers for Claude. Deborah will be sending me a picture of Frazier from High School days. I’ll send Mrs. Scott a thank you note, and thank yous to others, too. Especially Shirley, my newest sister.

All in all, a whirlwind chapter in this spinning life. A tough act to follow. I’ll remember this experience and hold it right up there with watching the children being born and getting married. And I will get back there, to Clarks Hill, again some day. Maybe this summer for a few days of camping along the Savannah River and a Saturday night fish fry with my friends.

Rap? Or Hip Hop?

I'm in a musical kind of mood today, and as
you'll see, it has everything to do with that picture. Ever do that?
Have one of those days when you hear something and it reminds you of a
song. I even burst into song as if life was "Oklahoma". Some of the
folks at the Black Cat really get a kick out of it. Why just this
morning I heard someone talking and they said the word "pig". I started
to belt out the Bill Monroe classic Pig in a Pen.

Goes like this:

I got a pig at home in a pen
Corn to feed him on
All I need's a pretty little girl
To feed I'm when I'm gone

Going up on a mountain
To sow a little cane
Raise a barrel of sorghum
Sweet little Liza Jane

Black clouds arising
Sure sign of rain
Put that old gray bonnet
On little Liza Jane

Yonder comes that gal of mine
How do you think I know
Know her by that gingham gown
Hanging down so low

Bake them biscuits baby
Bake em good and brown
When you get them biscuits baked
We're Alabama bound

Anyhoo:-), like my pal Batty Mo says, I got to thinkin' of some lyrics I wrote right about 'lecshun time. I looked at em' and added a few more lines.

You do the same. Add some lines if you want to in the comments. Let er' fly. Get mad, good and pissed off. The world, and I, are countin' on ya'll. You can do it. Sing what you write out loud. Sing the whole thing out loud. Make some noise.

Now put the beat to it and read it like you're on TV with Snoop Dog or someone like dat.

My name is Joe and I’m here to say that the politics is crazy in a messy way.

They don’t want peace, they can’t say love, the olive branch is missing like the mourning dove.

We gotta fight on, like we’re in the hunt. Our country’s losing ground on a lot of fronts.

Call up the man, tell em’what for, make sure you point em’ to the exit door.


Go to the polls, cast your lot. Change the direction of this angry pot
-full of haters, cheaters and the rest, put em’ in a sack and make em’ pass the test.

Try to get out of that sack in the lake. The fate of our country is what we have at stake.


We got a new batch, but nuthin’s on the table

They better do it right or we’ll tie em’ to a cable

We’ll throw em’ off a bridge

We’ll throw em’ out the door

We’ll tie em’ to the tracks for locomotive forty four


We gave em’ time, but They still have the killin’

We gave them votes, But they still ain’t willin’

Now write em’ a letter, Give em’ a shout

Stand in their hallway, Til they throw you out


Do it for peace, Call out or pray

Do something god dammit, Or you’ll die this way!