The Broken Window

The Broken Window

 

When I was still young I had a BB gun like all the boys my age had. It was a Red Ryder lever-cock model, the most popular of the day. My buddy, who lived next door, Gene Carr, also had one, so he and I would often go back in the “New Roads” area and shoot birds and whatever else we could find to shoot at. We both hated it when my brother Danny, Delmar Rucker, and Donnie Burcham and other friends of theirs would sneak and follow us, because we wanted to do “secret stuff” back there, stuff that we didn’t want known. After they followed us several times, we soon learned to hide in waiting on them. When they got real close, we’d jump out and scare the hell out of them, and then as they ran, we’d shoot them in the butt with our BB guns. I got in more trouble doing that, but it was the only thing that worked. Dad peppered my butt big-time every time I did that, but two or three days later, I’d be right back doing it again. I finally stopped one day after I embedded a BB in Delmar Rucker’s butt from close range, and his dad had to dig it out with his pocketknife. Delmar’s dad threatened to shoot me with my own BB gun, and to also beat my dad’s butt if I didn’t quit immediately, so I finally stopped, but not until the boys promised me they would stop following me all the time. Actually, the main reason I stopped was so that I could continue living. Dad promised me instant death if it ever happened again, and I knew beyond any doubt that he was deadly serious.

            Sometimes as a different sort of entertainment, Gene and I would get Danny, Donnie (Frog), Delmar, and other friends of theirs down in Gene’s basement, and have them put the boxing gloves on. We’d stage our own Olympics, in a manner of speaking. We did this several times until Dad got wind of it, and then it was red-butt day all over again for me.

            I know there have been times in Danny’s life when he felt like he owed me a lot in the way of paybacks, and actually when I reflected on it myself, I had to agree that maybe he did. There were times when we got a little older that I slept with one eye open, not sure what he might attempt to do to me in the middle of the night. I knew the building of hate when I saw it, so I decided I had to do something nice for him so he’d forget any hostile actions he might be contemplating against my physical being. One day the chance arrived when I could do something to make him feel better about his big brother.

            Several of us boys were playing football in our empty lot next to the house. Danny accidentally kicked the football right through Mom’s double-kitchen window on the north side of the house. Danny was scared to death that Dad would kill him when he got home from work, but I thought Dad would surely understand a simple accident had happened, so I told Danny not to worry. I would claim that I did it and take the blame for him. He dropped to his knees in pure gratitude, willing to kiss my feet or do anything else I wanted him to do. I became Danny’s instant hero.

            I approached Mom and took complete responsibility for the broken window, and I helped her cover the opening with cardboard. She told me Dad would be mad, but she’d try to keep him under control. Late that night when Dad came home from work, Mom told him of the accident I had with the football, but she told him I did the right thing and voluntarily confessed to it.

            I played like I was asleep, but Dad came over to my bed. “Would you please step out to the back porch area for a minute?” he said in a very soft voice. There was no anger in the tone of his voice at all, so I bravely went to the porch. This next part of the story is really very ugly, so I will just say that I had a very red, extremely sore butt for the next several days. The neighbors heard a lot of screaming.

            Today, the police would arrest a father for doing what he did to me in the way of discipline, but all the kids in our area pretty much got the same treatment from their dads.  My Grandfather Meredith gave my dad a leather razor strap years before to sharpen his straight razor on. It was a quarter of an inch thick, and Dad used this on me on those rare occasions when he felt I deserved it, but never any harder than on that occasion when I got it for something I never did. I nearly folded and told the truth on Danny, but I felt he couldn’t survive what I was getting, so I bit my tongue and endured. I’ve had a lot of bad whippings, beatings, or whatever the proper name is for them, but never a worse one than that one. I will never forget it as long as I live, but you know what? I never blamed Dad for it. He had told us several times not to play football or baseball in the lot because we’d break a window.

            I think Dad did the only thing that was possible to make me a better person at the time, because even I realized I was bordering on being out of control at certain times. That beating made me wake up to the fact that I would never in my life ever take the blame again for somebody else, and possibly I might not ever even confess to something I actually did. It was a pretty severe lesson. It was the worst beating I ever had to endure, but it also was the last one.

 

Paul R. Meredith

1988

The Case of the Flying Gable

The Flying Gable

 There is one story of an event that happened when our family lived on the corner of Taylor and Cushing. Our Uncle Harley loved to build things, so one day when he was visiting us he noticed it was almost unbearably hot. In those days there was no air conditioning. Dad had a couple of fans placed here and there in the house, but they didn’t do much to cool the house. Uncle Harley stated to my dad, “Paul, I’ve got an idea how we can cool this house. I’ll see what I can do about making an attic fan for you.”

            Over the next couple of weeks, we never heard much back from Uncle Harley, but then one day he showed up with a marvelous new fan for cooling our house. It was a huge electric motor with a fan blade attached. I have since forgotten what he said about where the motor came from, but the fan blade was from an old car. Uncle Harley had somehow married the motor and the fan blade together to make this huge fan. The problem was that the southern gable of the house had to be custom altered to accept the new fan, plus electricity had to be run to it so it could be plugged in. It took Dad and Uncle Harley a couple of weekends to do the required work and install the fan.

            Uncle Harley had run the electricity down to a wall switch in the kitchen that Mom or Dad could flip to start the fan. On the day the fan was to be started for the first time, all the Meredith kids, plus some of our neighbors, gathered to watch. Uncle Harley and Dad were stationed in the attic to watch as Mom flipped the switch in the kitchen. The fan had just one speed. As soon as Mom flipped the switch, we all heard the whine of the big motor as it started to wind up. It gathered speed slowly as we saw all the curtains in the house start to be sucked away from the windows by the surge of air movement through the house and into the attic. A couple of the chairs even moved and tipped over. Suddenly we all heard the fan reach a crescendo of a very loud whine, and then came the very loud ripping and crashing of wood. I heard Dad and Uncle Harley scream, “Turn it off, Olive!” Mom hurriedly ran to the switch and turned it off, but it was way too late. The huge fan had torn away from the house, taking with it nearly half the gable end it was framed into. The fan flew across the street and finally lodged into two tall poplar trees in Lil and Red Fleming’s yard across the street, and then it fell with a thud into their yard. Their two tall trees had devastating holes ripped in them by the flight of the fan. One of the trees was about six feet shorter than it had been before.

            Uncle Harley and Dad had screamed in a panic for Mom to shut the switch off because they both felt they were about to be sucked into the blade of the fan just prior to it ripping out the end of our house and flying clear across the street. They had hung on to the ceiling joists with all the strength they had. Had those two poplar trees not been in the flight path of the huge fan, there is no way of knowing how far it might have flown, or how much really hard damage it would have caused. It was probably a blessing the trees had stopped the fan, even though the trees would suffer and show damage for many years to come. If that fan had hit a house, God only knows what would have happened.

            Dad and Uncle Harley scurried to find a large tarp to cover the end of the house because rain clouds were forming. One of our neighbors had just such a tarp and loaned it to Dad until repairs could be made to the house, a chore several of the neighbors helped Dad and Uncle Harley to do. The whole end of the house had to be rebuilt and even some of the roof. It had been an experiment that, had it worked, would have been wonderful for heat relief, but it failed miserably and caused major damage. The problem was the size of the electric motor; it was absolutely way too large for such an application. Had the fan had several lower speeds, it possibly could have worked, although one of the kids would have eventually experimented and flipped the switch to high.   

Paul R. Meredith

circa 1992

Should A Prophet Profit by Propheteering?

Should A Prophet Profit by Propheteering?

 

—————***—————

 

A Manifesto

 

During the time when Jesus walked the earth and for many years after his death, we know there were a number of prophets speaking for Jesus as they roamed around. Their purpose was to educate people of the existence of God and help bring them to their salvation. All of the early prophets were men who had forsaken any wealth they had for the higher glory of preaching the word of God to all the unbelievers of the time.

            I have long thought that had these men kept their wealth and in fact attempted to increase it as they preached, they could have accomplished much more for the kingdom. As it was, their travel was fairly limited because they couldn’t buy passage on ships or camel trains to reach the far corners of the known world. Had the prophets only asked for donations of money to increase their travel possibilities, many more people could have been saved, and much, much earlier than possible with the limited ranges they had by merely walking.

            It also occurred to me that the masses would have listened more intently to a wealthy man than a poor one simply because they had more respect for rich people of the time. When a poor man and a rich man speak at the same event on the same topic, people migrate to hear the rich man because they think he must be more intelligent due to his station in life. It appears the richer a man is, the more he is respected. The same is true for a person’s station in life. Think of all the politicians you can and tell me the more important one of the following: a mayor of a town, a representative of a district, a senator from a state, or the president of the country. Such is the same on lower levels of life, such as the fireman or the fire chief, the policeman or the chief of police, the worker in the shop or the head of the same company. Many of these people at the higher levels attained their positions due to influence and money, although not all of them. A few earned their way up the ladder..

            Given the fact of importance, would a prophet not be in a more effective position by having money? After all, money can buy influence and power—and travel. The more power the prophet has, the more he can travel and speak to large groups of people.

 

So how does one become a prophet anyway? Do we really believe God selects them by some kind of special calling, or are they self-appointed? I lean toward the self-appointed possibility myself. It’s like being at church and the pastor continually says God gave his message to him. Who really believes that? Not me. In most cases, the sermons are selected by pastor alone.

            If a prophet can be self-appointed, why not me? I think I could figure out a way to coerce people into giving me money to spread the word. I could start my own religion and base it around predicting the end times. I think I could speak loudly and carry a big staff (stick) and wear a silver robe with a wide silver belt that would command attention. I could scare people into giving my church some of their money. I would gladly pay my tithes of ten percent to the church. After all, the church would be me. I would give myself the tithe in the name of the church.

            That guy Joseph Smith created the Mormon Church from scratch and Ron what’s his name started another big church, so why couldn’t I do the same? I believe I could—and I might even do it someday. Many others have done it.

Return of the Vigilante Goddess

Return of the Vigilante Goddess

by

Paul R. Meredith

 

I am promoting this book free for three days from July 18 thru July 20. This is the third book of my Vigilante series, but it is also a stand alone story on its own merits. It is a great thriller that may shock you as you realize something very much like what is told in the story could well be happening right now. We know about the vigilante justice in the old West, so this will make you wonder.

 

 

 

Brief Excerpt:

 

Esther Scroggins was a private investigator. While married to her first husband she owned a small investigation company. Then her husband died from a fast-acting form of cancer. After being a widow for several years, Esther itched for a change in her boring life. She was solicited and hired by a man she knew only as Sam Little. Her job was as a hired assassin, a position she never dreamed of ever accepting previously. But after hearing Sam Little’s explanation of why the job was so necessary, she bought into it wholeheartedly.

While working for Sam Little, Esther met and secretly married Bruno Martini, a work associate also in Little’s employ. Bruno was a cheerful man unlike any she had known previously. Esther considered him a truly great lover. Bruno was portly, of Italian descent, balding, and a child of immigrant parents. Esther was a thinly muscular redhead, taller than her husband by several inches, and had rarely laughed until she fell in love with Bruno. They were truly opposites in almost every way imaginable, but for whatever reason, they worked well together.
Bruno Martini met an untimely and unexpected death in a huge explosion and fire in the garage at their home. Esther was devastated beyond belief at her loss and cried nearly uncontrollably many times.

She vowed revenge for her husband’s death. Knowing Sam Little was at the heart of the reason for his death, he ultimately died at the hands of Kate Sullivan. It was retaliation for the contracted death of her husband, Bruno Martini.

 

Here is the order link:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Return-Vigilante-Goddess-Book-ebook/dp/B00E3W95PW/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1437161478&sr=8-14&keywords=paul+r.+meredith





Playing in the Dirt

Playing in the Dirt is a blog that my deceased daughter wrote over a period of several years. As I read it now and then, I see something new each time. Kris was a very intelligent woman (college English professor) who did everything with passion, including her love of people, and also her gardening. She was most passionate about the English language she loved to teach to her beloved students. Kris had a sense of humor that could not be denied; it was unique.

I urge you to log into her blog and give it a look. I believe you will be surprised at the many funny witticisms and her oblique way of seeing the world and the things in it. The more I read the things she wrote (besides just in this blog), the more I see what a beautiful person she was. I always knew it, but for whatever reason, it has come more into focus since she left us.

http://englishprof-playinthedirt.blogspot.com/2008/10/mushroom-walked-into-bar.html

Kristine Meredith-Sulzberger

The Love Wish

The Love Wish is one of those stories a reader will read all the way through without stopping. Then after they are done, they may even dream about it. For sure, they will think about it very often. It is not a story one reads and forgets.

The theme of the story is all too familiar with most people who have ever had a similar type of medical situation, or has seen a loved one experience one like Linda Folger experiences in this tender and compelling love story. But this story is more than a just a simple love story; it is a romantic medical adventure, quite unlike any other you may have ever read. I urge you to experience the reading of this very different kind of compelling medical romantic adventure.

A similar medical event has happened in my own family, and I venture to say in yours as well. As you read Linda Folger's love story, you will relive events from your own story, or possibly that of a family member or close friend.

If you only read one really good book this entire year, let it be this one, The Love Wish. I don't think you will regret it.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Wish-Paul-Meredith/dp/0595230288/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1435063426&sr=8-21&keywords=paul+r.+Meredith

Jenna McNabb, my Two-act Play

Most of the folks who read my books have no idea that I also wrote a play several years ago. It is a romantic drama called, Jenna McNabb. I actually wrote it during 2002, but then I had some ideas for writing more novels, so I placed the play on the back burner and wrote several of my novels over the next few years. I now have nineteen novels in publication.

My wife and I saw a two-act play recently at our local theater, a play which turned out to be pretty bad. Watching it made me wonder how good my play was compared to the one I just viewed. So I dug it out of the archives and read it again. I was quite surprised at how good it was. I decided I would contact one or two of our local theaters to see if they would be interested in staging my play. I contacted two via e-mail and one chose to not respond to my offer of sending them an e-mail copy to review, but the second one sent me a notice they might want to read it. They stated they would contact me soon. As I write this, I wait for that contact. Here is a teaser from the beginning of the play, Jenna McNabb.

Jenna McNabb

 

(Curtain opens)

THE SCENE: Jenna McNabb is meeting at her desk with a chemical salesman she has done business with previously, Charlie. After the handshake greeting, Jenna sits and motions for Charlie to take a seat. Charlie continues to stand for a brief moment.

CHARLIE: That sure is a sweet scene down there. (Charlie is commenting on the view of her cleavage)

JENNA: (Abruptly stands and points toward the door of her office) That’s it! Get out of here and don’t ever come back. I will never buy anything from you again. You will not speak to me in an offensive way like that ever again. Get out! Get out of here right now!

CHARLIE: But I didn’t mea….

JENNA: Get out, I said! I don't want to have to call security to remove you

(Charlie picks up his attaché case, and with his tail between his legs, exits Jenna’s office to the waiting room. He encounters a competitor, an old friend he’s had a drink with from time to time.)

STUART: Hey Charlie, what’s happening, old buddy?

CHARLIE: Hey Stu, it’s nice seeing you again. It’s been a long time. (He shakes hands with Stuart Williams)

STUART: You’re right—like a couple of years at least.

CHARLIE: Yeah. I think it was over in Indianapolis when we last crossed paths if I remember correctly.

STUART: That’s right, it was. We stayed at the same hotel and had dinner together that evening. So what about you being here? Did you make a big sale here today?

CHARLIE: Are you kidding me? There’s no way I could make a sale at this joint today. I ran head on into the wrath of Jenna McNabb.

STUART: The wrath of Jenna McNabb? What does that mean?

CHARLIE: Apparently you haven’t encountered the notorious Jenna McNabb yet, huh? She’s the chemicals buyer.

STUART: No, I don’t know her. It’s my first time here. Is she really difficult to deal with?

CHARLIE: She’s a witch on a broom if there ever was one; she just tossed me completely out of her office and told me to never come back. I probably lost the account for my company.

STUART: I’m sorry to hear that. I was looking forward to meeting her—hoping she’d be really nice. Since I’ve never been here before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I guess maybe I’m not so anxious to meet her now.

CHARLIE: Take my word for it; she’s a real honest-to-goodness witch. You’d better be on your best behavior. Are you the next one to see her?

STUART: Yes, I think so. I have a ten o’clock appointment.

CHARLIE: Well old buddy, all I can say is, I’m sorry you’re next. She’s in rare form today and I left her mad as hell, so good luck to you. You’ll need it, that’s for darn sure. I think it must be her time of the month, if you know what I mean.

STUART: Thanks, Charlie. That sure gives me a lot of confidence to walk in there with.

CHARLIE: Hey listen, Stu, I’m making a couple of other calls here in town before I leave. Any chance of getting together for a beer later after work?

STUART: Yeah, sure—love to. Where at?

CHARLIE: How about Howie’s place over on Elm Street—say about six? You know the place, right?

STUART: Yeah, I know it—best burgers in town. I stopped there last night to grab a quick bite before I went home.

CHARLIE: Right, so maybe a couple of beers and a burger. Six okay with you?

STUART: Six it is—see ya there.

CHARLIE: Hey listen Stu; I’m tellin’ ya the straight stuff; don’t take any crap from that witch in there. She’s a real tough nut to deal with, and she won’t put up with any monkey business. I found that out the hard way.

 

***

 

The play runs approximately two hours with scene changes and an intermission.