July Seventeenth has been my birthday since the day I was born
1962 maybe??
I was born 62 years ago today.
Hard to believe that I have made through 62 years, but I have always accepted that my guardian angels rack up a lot of overtime.
Like that moment I talk about when, standing behind a parked van waiting to cross a street, I didn’t bother to look and started walking out into the street.
My brain gave the command to start but for some reason my legs refused to move.
It was as if, I felt at the time, someone had a hold of my coat and I was frozen for a second.
Then a car went zooming past inches in front of me.
A car I had never seen coming.
I had never bothered to peek around the corner of that van.
Had my legs worked, I would have been a greasy spot on Lyon Street with no one to blame but myself.
I don’t go all Maradona-hand of God here but something, someone held me back.
BUT I DIGRESS.
I know the story of the day of birth.
I know it because it was told so often.
Not sure why, but in a family of 11 kids, it was my birthday that got talked about.
It was a Sunday in July and earlier that weekend, my Mom felt good enough to decide to have a big Sunday dinner.
Even with me on the way at any minute and seven kids already there, she also invited my Uncle Bud’s family to come over as well.
It was so exciting that I decided I wanted to show up but before my Mom and Dad went off to Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my Mom called my Aunt Marion and told to her please still to come over after church that morning and could she get dinner on the table?
So it was that a little bit later that afternoon my Dad came home to see all his kids and guests around the Sunday Dinner table and announced, “It’s a boy!”
Many is the time my Aunt Marion would sit with me in our kitchen and point down the back hallway and say, ‘I can still see your Dad coming in, one hand raised in kind of a salute, saying, it’s a boy!’
My four brothers, now with a clear majority, cheered.
My three sisters, hoping for a fifty-fifty split all cried.
At least that is the story that was told as long as I can remember.
As for name, Mike, that had been picked out for years.
When my brother Tim had been born in 1956, he had been named Mike for a couple days.
Family history has it that when my Dad went down to fill out the paper work, he had one more look at the new baby and said, “Nope, he’s not a Mike.” and filled out the birth certificate for Timothy John Hoffman.
‘We will save Mike for the next one,’ Dad told Mom.
What Mom was thinking about ‘the next one’ at that moment has not been recorded.
And the next one was a girl, my sister Lisa.
But four years later, I showed up on that Sunday and my Dad took one look and said, ‘That’s a Mike.’
Since that day I have learned that there is something to that.
Think about it and I am sure there is in your life ‘a Mike.’
When folks tell me they chose the name Mike for a new baby, I shake my head and say, ‘You’ll be sorry.’
Mike Mike Mike, there is just something about the name and what can I say as it seems to be more of a label for what’s in the jar rather than just a name on the jar.
So July 17, 1960, to quote, Mr. Dickens’, I am born.
Born to cheers and tears and a used first name that would not have fit with anyone else in my family.
What a long strange trip it’s been … so far.
Mr. Dickens’ writes in his book David Copperfield:
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I will have to look up what being born on a Sunday at Noon means.
I have been a lot of things in life, but I can’t call unlucky one of them.
I hope I am smart enough to both enjoy the sunshine of God’s benevolence in my life as well as smart enough to not question my good fortune.
Because, you see George, I really have had a wonderful life.
they did not value resources, communities historic nature
Today’s haiku is adapted from a quote from US Representative Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico when she made a statement about the US Forest Service and that they made multiple miscalculations, used inaccurate models and underestimated how dry conditions were in the south-west, causing a planned burn to reduce the threat of wildfires to explode into the largest blaze in New Mexico’s recorded history.
Representative Fernández said, “These are complex issues. Starting a prescribed burn in an area where there are homes and watersheds and communities should be something that you take incredibly seriously because those are high value assets. They did not value the resources, the communities, the historic nature of these communities and so they went forward allowing more risk than they should have.”
She was speaking about forest management.
You could easily think she was talking about any number of things in the news right now.
When talking about right now I must be talking about rights.
Right to vote.
Right to have your vote counted.
Curious how right and right are the some word.
The online Merriam-Webster defines the words like this:
>Something to which one has a just claim.
>Conforming to facts or truth.
>Being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper.
>Qualities (such as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval.
My thought this morning was to write about how difficult it has been of late to construct a daily haiku and write some commentary in a light hearted way when I am feeling anything but lighthearted.
I saw this quote of Representative Fernández’s and thought how easy it would be to use the words in a commentary on how so many decisions and actions are being taken today without any consideration to the value the resources, the communities, the historic nature of these communities and so they went forward allowing more risk than they should have.
Then by chance I hit that word right.
Seems there has been a major disconnect on the importance of this word.
Right.
Rights.
Right rights.
I am reminded of Proverbs 21:3 (NIV) –
To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
It was a long time ago but I had to take a class in school to learn how to drive a car.
It was a free class offered by the Grand Rapids Public Schools, all you had to do was sign up.
The only restriction was that you had to turn 16 years old, legal driving age, either before the class started or by the time it finished to sign up.
In the winter of 1976, for reasons I have never understood, my Dad was interested in my getting a drivers license.
At the same time he also took a life insurance policy out of me.
Maybe he thought it was a good investment.
It was January and my birthday was in July and I knew that I couldn’t sign up until then but he kept after me to sign up for drivers ed.
Maybe he just wanted to avoid another summer of having a kid in drivers ed instead of during the school year.
To make him happy I went into the office and asked for a registration card and filled it out and dropped it in the office inbox and forgot about it.
I can’t say I have had many you-could-knock-me-over-with-a-feather shocks in my life but a week later, this would have been January still, I was walking home from school in the snow with my buddies when my Dad pulled up next to us in his car, rolled down the window and said, “get in.”
This NEVER HAPPENED.
The first thing that went through my mind was to examine my conscience to figure out what I done wrong.
Truthfully, the list was so long I most likely didn’t know where to start.
My buddies all looked at me with that oh-are-you-in-trouble look and they all moved away from me to get away from any possible shrapnel.
Very slowly and tentatively I opened the car door and got in my Dad’s car.
My Dad’s car was one of the pleasures’ he allowed himself to indulge in.
My Dad had driven a Thunderbird convertible in the early 1960’s when there might not have been a more coveted car in America.
He updated that to the Buick Riviera, which in the late ’60s had POWER EVERYTHING.
From the Riviera, he got a 1976 two door navy blue Mercury Cougar.
It was this car I was now sitting in.
15 years old and I learned how to drive in this car
Sitting in the front seat and waiting to find out what I had done.
My stomach was doing all kinds of calisthenics and I kept my mouth shut.
My Dad drove pulled away from the curb and said, “We are going to the park so I can show you have to drive. School called and you have Driver’s Ed at 4 o’clock!”
HUhhhhhhhhhhhhhh whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?
Talk about you-could-knock-me-over-with-a-feather!
We got to the nearby Riverside Park and I was put in the drivers seat of my Dad’s Cougar and on a snow covered park road, I got a quick lesson in how to start a car, put it in gear and drive.
While I drove, my Dad explained that School had called and said that due to a cancellation there was an opening in the Drivers Ed class that started that day.
As it happened, my card was sitting out on the desk and the school was calling to see if I was eligible for the class.
See, when I filled out the card, I put my birthday as being in July, 1976!
The current year.
The school was calling to check if was old enough.
In other words, had I been born in 1959 (when I had been born in 1960).
My Dad said that my Mom had taken the call and she looked at Dad and asked what to say.
“TELL THEM YES!,” my Dad said.
About an hour later, I was dropped off back at school and found the Drivers Ed class where the teacher had my card in his hand.
“You Hoffman?” he asked.
I said yes and the class started.
The teacher started talking to the class about driving and getting a drivers license.
opportunities move on, never wanted to was living MY dream
Robert Wayne Hendrickson (1933 – 2021)
Some years back when I worked at WZZM13 TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, it was announced that the old Ottawa Hills High School Building, a building that currently was home to Iroquois Middle School, would be demolished.
At the morning news meeting, possible story lines about Ottawa Hills were brought up and I said that someone had to interview my Uncle Wayne.
The story was assigned to a very young Steve Patterson, now a national reporter with NBC News.
I got with Steve and called my Mom to get Uncle Wayne’s phone number and Uncle Wayne agreed to meet Steve at the old building for a walk through and interview.
My Uncle Wayne was known to the world as Robert Wayne Hendrickson.
(For some reason, my Mom’s family used that Southern tradition of family members using middle names within the family.)
Robert Wayne Hendrickson or Bob Hendrickson or Coach Hendrickson was Ottawa Hills High School.
While my Mom went to South High School in Grand Rapids, by the time her brothers started the 7th grade in school, the districts had changed and they went to Ottawa Hills.
While at Ottawa Hills, Uncle Wayne was an athletic wonder.
According to the stories my brothers told me, in basketball, he could lay up with either the left or right hand and was pretty much unstoppable.
The story was that Michigan wanted him but in those days there weren’t athletic scholarships and beside, he wanted to get married, so he went to Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
After college, he got a job teaching and coaching at Ottawa Hills.
He would stay there until he was retired at age 60.
Uncle Wayne was quoted in the Grand Rapids Press, “Ottawa Hills was my life from age 13 to age 60, with the exception of my four years at Hope College. When I returned as a teacher, my old teachers helped me so much. They wanted me to start calling them by their first names but I was never able to do it. Before I was old enough to start school there in the seventh grade, I would watch the high school teams on the practice fields and want to be a part of that. What a great break for me to spend so much of my life at Ottawa Hills. I had opportunities to move on, but I never wanted to go. I was living my dream.”
The dream included winning two Michigan Class A State Championships in 67-68 and 68-69.
Each year, there was parade and celebration on the south end of Grand Rapids.
As the Coach was my Mom’s little brother, we went to see the parades from the vantage point of the front porch of the Coach’s house.
I was only 8 years old and after the 2nd parade, I figured these things happened every year.
We got to see the trophy’s up close.
I have never won a trophy in my life but that’s okay as any other trophy that I could have won PALED TO INSIGNFICANCE when compared to those trophies.
Also there with the trophies were the nets.
I have watched countless teams cut down basketball nets after big games.
Maybe of all sports traditions this one is the most special to me because of seeing those nets laying there.
Silent objects speaking volumes.
There were all sorts of stories of my Uncle as a Coach.
Those championship teams in the late 60’s were integrated teams.
I think that was unusual for the time, maybe inevitable but new.
Back in those days, BEFORE THE DUNK was made illegal, the story was that my Uncle Wayne’s team had a dunk DRILL in warm up.
His team would line and one by one they would dribble in and BA BOOM, BA BOOM, BA BOOM, they would dunk dunk dunk.
I was told that the backboards would be swaying and the crowd screaming.
And the other team watched.
Watched in disbelief.
Those games were over before they started.
My brother tells a story about a game against our high school on the North End, Creston (Ottawa was on the South End) and Uncle Wayne came off the bench, yelling at the refs.
My brother says, and as I remember it, this was in the OLD Creston High School Gym, where the basketball court was kinda wedged into a space surrounded by bleachers, my brother said the crowd just went crazy yelling at Uncle Wayne.
Uncle Wayne spins around and GLARES at the crowd.
And the crowd shut up.
Years later, Uncle Wayne happened to be at our house when we were watching a Piston’s game.
He stood there watching the end of the game and started coaching.
Never took his eyes off the screen but kept saying out loud how much time was left as the seconds ticked off on some click inside, he called all the plays, so it seems to me, and narrated how the Piston’s would win the game before it happened.
Uncle Wayne, to me, was bigger than life.
He was one of those guys who filled a room with his personality and physical presence.
I remember that I when I went to Creston, the Creston Basketball Coach, Jim Haskins, was my biology teacher.
Mr. Haskins told me once how the first time his team played Ottawa he watched that team run out on the floor and then their Coach came out and HE LOOKED SEVEN FEET TALL.
Mr. Haskins just stood there shaking his head.
Uncle Wayne knew it too.
He once said to me that, “Uncle Paul is the only one I know who makes me feel smaller.”
Uncle Paul, who also played basketball in the City League and at Hope, was 6′ 11″.
So Steve Patterson goes out on assignment to interview Bob Hendrickson.
Later that afternoon, Steve got back to the building and he sought me out.
“HOFFMAN,” says Steve.
“Your Uncle! …”
“Is a LEGEND!”
“Yes,” I said, “I know.”
Late on New Years Eve, 2021, I got email that, back in Grand Rapids, my Uncle Wayne has died.
I seem to say this often, but I say it because it is true, that in a era when experts mourn the lack of role models, I got more than my fair share.
My Father, my Grand Father, my Uncles; Wayne, Carol, Paul, Bud and Jim, my brothers; Paul, Jack, Bob, Tim, Pete, Steve and Al and even all my brothers in law.
I don’t know, maybe God knew something and made sure I had lots of help.
Love them all and proud of them all.
Proud to be a part of their family.
Proud of my Uncle Wayne.
Very very said to hear that my Uncle Wayne has died.
He was part of my life and part of what made my life.
Like Alistair Cooke when Duke Ellington died, “I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.”
memories so thick like presents to be unwrapped what gets remembered?
One of my brothers sent out this old photograph the other day.
The photograph had been around our house when I was a kid growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan as long as I can remember.
And since I am about 1 and a half years old in this photograph, that was longer ago than I can remember.
The story was that some neighbor lady worked for the Grand Rapids Press and thought that a family picture would be a nice addition to the paper at Christmas time.
The caption in the paper read, “GLAD TIDINGS – The nine children of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hoffman, Sligh Blvd. gather round …”
One of the oddities of this photo is that there were two more kids yet to come.
My Mom always said she thought 8 was a good number.
Being 8th, I really appreciated that.
I am sitting next to my Mom and how they kept me from sticking out my tongue I don’t know.
My sister Janet remembered that my Mom had to go out and buy Christmas Stockings for the photo shoot and didn’t get enough so my brother Paul had to use a gym sock.
But my sister Lisa responded, “Does anyone actually remember this? I must have been three years old at the time and have no memory of it.”
Of course you have to be old enough to have memories.
And Christmas memories are so thick that they have to be brushed away leaves in a fall windstorm.
But what makes a memory?
Here is a photograph from this Christmas.
Me and my grand daughters, Azaria, Ella and Lenox.
Lenox is a little older than I was in that black and white photograph.
I don’t remember that day.
Bothers me a little that Lenox might not remember this day though I understand.
Guess we keep the pictures around as clues or keys to the boxes where the memories are stored.
sun shining worship vast, beautiful cool treasures airy heights pale beams
Church this month in the Low Country is being held outdoors on a piece of property where the Church hopes to build a Church.
Nothing too unusual about that but in this case, the Church has partnered with the Local Community Theater in an effort to build a Community venue that on Sundays will host the Church and the rest of the week will be the area community theater.
Kind of a cool idea when you come down to it.
In conversation with the Pastor he remarked that their Bank isn’t quite sure how to deal with this.
The Bank has a plan to loan money to build a Church.
The Bank has a plan to loan money to build a Community Theater.
But the Bank isn’t quite sure how to proceed when the two partner together to raise money together and share the building.
So the Church is meeting this month on the property here in Bluffton, SC.
My brain for the most part is still on Michigan’s Weather Schedule.
I look at the calendar and think Sunday Morning Church outside in November and I dressed in several layers.
Layers that weren’t necessary as the sun was out and the morning was perfect for Church.
A vacant lot in a business development in South Carolina may not be the prettiest spot on earth but that morning, with the sun on my face and the incredible blue vault of sky over head it wasn’t bad.
Bill Bryson’s account of visiting St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome came to mind.
Curch in the Low Country – Fall – 2021
Mr. Bryson wrote: “St Peter’s doesn’t look all that fabulous from the outside, not at least from the piazza at its foot, but step inside and it’s so sensational that your mouth falls open whether you want it to or not. It is a marvel, so vast and beautiful and cool and filled with treasures and airy heights and pale beams of heavenly light that you don’t know where to place your gaze.”
I felt that.
But I felt that this morning just being outdoors.
No big building.
I felt that for the warm sun on face.
It brought to mind also Berean Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The Church where I grew up.
Not sure why but after being on the board, the church history committee, teaching 4th grade Sunday School for 10 years (if that doesn’t give you a fright I don’t know what will) and the church librarian, I still got greeted by greeters.
I would be welcomed and exchanged pleasantries,
Then I would be asked if I had been there before.
And I would answer I been going there since 1960.
Then the greeter would realize I was one of ‘those’ Hoffman’s.
There was a time when, with 11 dutch kids, we took up 2 full pews it seemed.
Two full pews of blond kids.
The Church was in the traditional design with what was probably a 4 or 5 story sanctuary open from floor to roof beams with a balcony running around three sides of the interior.
The walls reached high above the balcony on either side and way up near the top were wide stained glass windows.
There were times when everything worked out and morning sun would pour through those windows and multi colored beams of light reached out across the congregation.
I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
It wouldn’t last long.
At some point, someone sitting in the sunlight would squirm and then hold a Church bulletin over their head to shield their eyes.
Then another and another.
And that would be it for the sunshine.
Upstairs in the Balcony there were be some movement.
I knew what was coming and while I regretted the loss of sunshine what came next was pretty good,
Upstairs an usher would be making their along the balcony to stand under the windows.
In their hand would be a 20 foot bamboo pole with a metal hook on the end.
Above each window was a rolled up window shade.
Hanging down from each shade was pull cord about 20 feet long hanging down.
There was a small loop in the bottom of the cord.
As you might have guessed at the this point the usher was going to try and fish the hook on the end of the pole though the loop on the cord and pull the shade down over the window.
At this point, the sermon was over.
The Pastor knew it.
The congregation knew it.
I sure knew it.
This was like what Woody Hayes said about passing football.
Three things could happen and 2 of them were bad.
Except that with a 20 foot bamboo pole, a 20 foot cord and a spring loaded window shade there were a whole lot more than three things that could happen and only one of them was good.
This being a Baptist Church everyone ignored what was going.
This being a Baptist Church everyone watched anyway but trying to not watch.
When the pole went up and the hook missed the loop you could hear a pulse run through the church.
An audible sigh.
That poor usher knew that everyone was watching.
Now there was NO WAY that this was going to go well.
And it did go well every once in awhile.
An older, experienced usher would know what to do and they would catch that loop the first time and slowly draw the shade down and handle that tricky point of the deal where the loop was removed from the hook with the same tension being maintained on the cord so that the downward progress of the shade was maintained at a steady rate.
But there was nothing an older, experienced usher wanted to do more than to hand off the job to some new guy, some young guy who WANTED THE JOB, who wanted to show just how slick they were.
No older, experienced usher never ever wanted to deny this opportunity to learn to someone eager for the job.
We never seemed to be short of those who were eager to give this a try so this was almost always a great show.
Repeated efforts to hook the loop.
The mistake to pull straight down without working that pole to lay out at an angle so that you could bring the shade down in one continuous motion.
Let the loop off the hook.
And what we all waited for, to lose the cord at just the wrong time and release the tension in the pull in just the wrong way so that the spring was released and the shade was rolled back up happened a lot.
Sometimes this happened slowly and everyone would smile as the shade rolled up.
Sometimes this happened in a rush and a snap and then folks laughed out loud.
Sometimes it was right out of the movies and the shade rolled up so fast and so hard that it rolled over and over and tangled everything up with the cord.
When that happened I fell out of the pew and my brother Pete had to sit on me with his hand over me mouth to keep me quiet.
Once it seems that the shade shot up and rolled and snapped and actually fell off the wall but that might have just been me hoping real hard.
Did I mention there were three of these windows a side?
Somehow Church went on.
And at some point someone came up with the bright idea of putting really long cords on those shades so we didn’t need the pole anymore.
Neither here no there but it seems like that happened after I had reached an age where I might be expected to not try something with those cords had they been in reach.
It sure made church interesting from the none-going-to-meeting point of view.
I was a kid but I understood the predicament of the Pastor.
Poor guy had to keep going in the face of adversity.
But maybe because I had read Huckleberry Finn I felt maybe they might have handled this differently.
In Huckleberry Finn a funeral is interrupted by the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard. It was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along.
The funeral went on just like Church did..
But in Huck Finn, the undertaker went to investigate “… and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “He had a rat!” Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn’t no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.
Yesterday just as the Preacher started preaching a whole bunch of Harley Davidson motorcycles went by.
My wife noticed that everyone on cue, like a drill team, looked to the right.
It was so much a group effort that the Pastor stopped and looked.
“They’re Motorcycles,” he said.
YOU HAVE ALL SEEN THEM BEFORE.
And with a laugh we went on.
There warn’t no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.
No Haiku For You 