In Good Company - Part 2

Quarrytech - Late Summer 2006

Quarrytech - Fall 2003

What a fun ride it has been! I've got to thank the two owners, Jay Heck and J.R. Heck for giving me the opportunity four years ago to come and help them build Quarrytech into a South Texas powerhouse. They have been unbelievably generous over the years, paying us all way more than anybody else would have, treating us to beach trips, lavish dinners,numerous bonuses, and time off. In addition, they have always bent over backwards to supply us with the highest quality equipment to ensure that we are able to do our jobs without the hassles of repeated equipment failure. It's been fun to work for two guys whose faith has compelled them to spread the wealth around rather than hoarding it for themselves.

In Good Company - Part 1

Thomas, getting 'er done in New Braunfels, TX

Nicknames: Longshanks, X-Factor, Bones, T-Train
Songs: Hard Working Man - Brooks & Dunn, Jole Blon - Waylon Jennings

In one Word: Loyal

Tom is the kind of guy who can build, fix, or modify anything. I keep telling him that when the Chinese, or whomever, invade us, that my family is moving with his up into the mountains in [secret location] where we will live off the land and form a resistance movement. A hard working and talented guy, Tom has been a great co-worker over the past couple of years.

Shawn, happy to be standing on a frozen lake in Colorado moments before we set off on a four mile hike through the snow that nearly did us in.

Nicknames: Sunday Morning, Mr. Automatic

Songs: Easy - The Commodores, Boom - P.O.D., Copenhagen - Robert Earl Keen

In One Word: Steadfast

Shawn is the most reliable and constant guy I have ever worked with. He is like Tim Duncan, quietly and steadily banking 10 footers off the glass day in and day out. I will miss his easy going personality and infectious laugh. I can imagine Shawn sitting on his front porch calmly chewing tobacco and drinking ice tea during a category 5 hurricane saying something like "how bout that?", as the world crashes down all around him.

Bobby, on cloud 9 in southwestern Oklahoma.

Nicknames: Mr. Boucher, The Comeback Kid
Songs: Heart of Gold - Neil Young, Against the Wind - Bob Seger, Rusty Cage - Johnny Cash

In Three Words: Tough as Nails

If you can imagine it, Bobby has experienced it. Life keeps dealing him blow after blow and Bobby keeps getting back up long after most guys would have given up or died. Three stories filed under the category "Dog" will illustrate what I'm talking about. The first year I worked with Bobby, one of his dogs was kidnapped and taken to Pennsylvania by a heartbroken elderly man whose own dog had recently passed away. With the help of friends, Bobby was able to track down his dog and fly it back home.
Last year, on the company beach trip his son Dylan ended up in the hospital after a pit bull bit his knee. And finally, earlier this year his dog killed a monkey in the front yard. Yes, read that last sentence again, bearing in mind that we live in Texas. His dog killed a monkey!

As tragedy after tragedy far more serious than a kidnapped dog or dead monkey has entered Bobby's life, he has risen with a resolve and inner reservoir of strength that has left me amazed. And just like Job, he has refused to curse God, his faith stronger rather than weaker after all he has been through. I have seen Bobby work hard all day, time after time on days when most guys in his situation would just have called in sick. More importantly, Bobby is an all-star dad who gives 110% to his kids as well as his job. I am humbled to work with him, his example will live in my heart as long as I live.

Nate, pausing to watch Shawn's 4x4 hijinks after a hard day's work clearing brush.

Nickname: Nate Dogg
Song: Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

In One Word: Creative

Nate is a computer, marketing and PR genius. He is slowly transforming the look and presentation of the company. Nate's sharp wit and sense of humor keep us all laughing whenever we are in the office. And whenever anybody has a computer question the response is always, "call Nate, he'll know." Nate's computer skills, business savvy and humor will take him far in life.

Brett, auditioning for "When Animals Attack!" in southern Cali.

Nicknames: Friday Night, Dyno-mite!
Songs: Get Down Tonight - KC and The Sunshine Band, Bang a Gong (Get it On) - T. Rex

In one Word: Encouraging

Brett is the life of the party, always clownin' around and making everybody laugh. On the toughest days, he'll drive by whistling and hollering or doing something to lift your spirits. Also incredibly devoted to his teammates, if Brett's around - you know somebody's got your back.

The people you work with end up being like a second family - you laugh, cry, fight, and experience large portions of life together. In our case, "like a band of gypsies [we've rolled] down the highway" spending many a day together in far away places, working our tails off, enjoying the scenery, eating like kings, and trying not to let the "sound of our own wheels drive us crazy."

Helprin Quote

" How he loved it when an electric lamp shone in a room just on the edge of darkness, for then the light was mobile, its condition like a sunrise or sunset, the relative strengths of room light and lamplight changing in infinite gradation, at first the lamplight unneeded and then the only thing left, having become a sun. It was four o'clock, just at the point of balance after which the war of lights would intensify."

- From Freddy and Frederika

Searching For The Perfect Job

Well, the race is on as we prepare to peel north like the Dukes of Hazzard, hootin and hollering the whole way as we try to outrun unemployment before the baby comes. I've got a great job now that I will miss sorely but Uncle Jesse is calling Daisy home and so off we go. As I search for a new job my thoughts keep wandering to the perfect job and just so I'll quit thinking about it here's a partial list of some of the many jobs I would love to have.

Tugboat Captain. A life on the sea and home for dinner every night. I can only imagine how neat it would be to pull up next to a super tanker and feel completely overwhelmed by the immensity of it. The sounds of the sea gulls, water lapping, the hum of the diesel engine, and the almost rhythmic clanging of the buoy bells would create a wonderful sonic backdrop to the incredible views you would be taking in all day. I would love to do this job with my family as the crew. I would wear a thick wool sweater during the colder months and would occasionally smoke a pipe.

Shepherd. I imagine it would be a lot of fun to roam the hills of Scotland trying to keep a herd of sheep safe and in line. I would carry a small knapsack with wine, water, bread, chocolate and a harmonica. I think the kids would enjoy this as well, Jen... not so much.

Lighthouse Keeper. Again, another job the whole family could enjoy together. Unfortunately, I don't think this job exists anymore.

Winemaker or Farmer. Every time I pass a vineyard, orchard, or field of crops I am mesmerized by the order of it all, and I can only imagine the bliss of watching the asymmetrical dramas of nature play out over, under and through symmetrical rows of harvest.

Train Engineer. If you are a train guy (or gal) then I don't need to explain the lure of this one, and if you are not , then no amount of explaining would help.

California Love

The last four years I have had the fortunate privilege of visiting Southern California in the spring when the snow is still capping the peaks above Los Angeles and wildflowers carpet the high desert. I have mixed feelings about California, I love to visit and I love to leave. They have every conceivable variety of vegetation, desert, and mountain all jammed into a pretty small area. All four years my head has been on a constant swivel just trying to take it all in. The negative, of course, is all the people jammed into that same small area. Don't stop to smell the flowers - you'll get run over.


A little slice of heaven off of Interstate 5 south of Lebec



A Texas-like view on Highway 138 between Gorman and Palmdale


The RR tracks running along Historic route 66 in Oro Grande


My co-worker Shawn with Mt. San Antonio in the background last April. Getting to see this sight was a total surprise and near accident.

Yeah, I think I can make it

Took these pictures yesterday on the bridge just below Gruene. Not sure what this guy was thinking, but heard on the news that he was rescued and then immediately arrested. You can't see it in the picture but his car was getting tore up from all the debris in the water. The dam is going to be letting off this much water all week so he's not going to have much left if they don't figure out a way to get it out of there.

Overflowing

"He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends his rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." - Matthew 5:45

The grace of God is everywhere and it has overtaken and consumed me. In the midst of both the ordinary and unusual pains of life, there is this joy that cannot be squelched. It is a joy that has become physical in that I feel this lightness in my chest as if my heart had wings and it is just floating around in my body, my ribs being the only thing preventing it from flying on out of here. And yet occasionally in moments of ecstasy it does escape, floating about the room and I'm forced in my mind's eye to run after it, leaping off the sofa to catch it before it becomes entangled in the ceiling fan. It is the strangest feeling, and one that has been growing in intensity over the last five years. I guess you could say that I am falling in love. God has grabbed a hold of me and I can't look away.

Life doesn't make any sense to me. I honestly can't figure it out. Part game whose rules I don't know, part random tragedy, part minor heartbreak, and all struggle from the first to the last. My perception, right or wrong, is that there are some people who have an innate knowledge of how "the game is played", some internal indicator that let's them know how to act or react in any given situation. Whether or not that is true, what is true is that I am not one of those people. I am at a complete loss as to how to move through this life with grace and effectiveness. The image that comes to mind when I think of my life and thus my relationship with God is of a rat in a flood swollen and raging river clinging to a log, scrambling, scrambling, claws extended trying deperately to keep from being ripped off and swept away.

At some point in the last five years, I finally started to get a grip on the log. The river, choked with debris and rapids is only getting worse, the bank further away, but amidst the terror, I have started to enjoy the journey. Perched precariously atop my log I have seen glimpses of beauty, perceived only from this vantage point that sustain me and give me strength for the ride.

The grace of God is the most beautiful thing in the universe and because of its beauty, it has the power to sustain and uphold. The most beautiful and powerful display of God's grace was Jesus birth, life, death and resurection. The beauty of Jesus, in principle and in reality is so powerful that it overflows and fills all of life. As I cling desperately to Christ amid the torrents of life, inwardly my soul is flooded with beauty until I find that the rat has begun to do an Irish jig atop his log, laughing and crying all at once as the waters rage.

I have never experienced a major tragedy in my life and so I'm not yet qualified to speak on that subject but I have found that throughout the minor aches and pains of life that Christ's love and grace has given me the power to move forward. His love has saved my soul, yes, but in the meantime his beauty is redeeming my life.

A red flower in the desert west of Phoenix just last week, a drop of water slowly running down the shower wall earlier this year, the rising sun exposing the flaws in a brick wall by casting a thousand tiny shadows across it's rusty red face shortly after 9/11, my daughters' two arms wrapped tight around my neck in a fierce growling hug (she doesn't hug so much as attack), the color green in a hundred hues as seen through my back door, a breeze weighted with the smell of cedar, a sip of wine, the ripple of muscle in a longhorn's side as he tries to shoo the flies away, and the trembling sound made by a guitar in that Eli Young song that took me took me far, far away. All of these and so many more are examples of the love and grace of God that overflows and spills everywhere; signposts pointing to his beauty, foretastes of the kingdom, hints of the not yet, sustenance and power for the now.

To look at me outwardly, you would not know this great symphony playing in my chest, nor would I probably suspect of you. I guess that is one of our great challenges, isn't it? How do we transfer inward realities into external momentum? The cry for help goes out again...Jeeesuuss!

"There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly. In writing those lectures and the book they later turned into, it came to seem to me that if I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." - Frederick Buechner

Thanks, Lady Bird

The bluebonnets are back and we are loving it down here in Texas. Carpets of bluebonnets, Indian Paintbrushes and various other native wildflowers dotting the landscape along our highways and county roads make driving just about anywhere in Texas a joy this time of year. For that we can thank our former first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, a woman whose tireless efforts to promote natural beauty and conservation led to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965.

While looking at Mrs. Johnsons' website wildflower.org I ran across the following quote that I'll finish this post with - "Mrs. Johnson's concern for the environment was matched by her deep appreciation for wild America's native beauty. Her belief that beauty can bolster the spirit of a society and her determination to make the United States a more beautiful place became Lady Bird's true legacy. "Ugliness is so grim," Lady Bird Johnson once said. "A little beauty can help create harmony which will lessen tensions."

Photos taken along Interste 10 between Houston and San Antonio.

PATTY GRIFFIN!

That's Right

Uno, Dos, TRES!

From Iraq

I am constantly amazed at how different our war experience is from that of the WWII generation. We have a major war going on right now but aside from the daily rants of self serving politicians and talking heads and the odd bumper sticker you'd never know it. In the place of rations and sacrifice, we have a booming economy and an excess of everything. Instead of individuals laying down personal comfort for the common good, we have the usual every man for himself in the race for more. It is the War That is Easy to Ignore. And yet as we go about the daily routines of our life, 300,000+ of our fellow citizens are in harm's way serving the rest us. One of them is my buddy Scott (see Dec 25th post).

Scott's grandmother died last week, a hard loss to endure at any time, but especially hard when you are halfway around the world and separated from the rest of your family. However, Scott is a humble, selfless man prone to action rather than complaining. One of the tough who get going during the hard times. He would never complain or feel sorry for himself but I know he would appreciate our prayers during this difficult time. If you are reading this would you please pray both for his encouragement during this time and for his safety while traveling around Iraq. And while you're at it throw in an extra one for his wife Gina and their two young daughters as well. Thanks.

Scott sent me a song that he wrote about his grandmother after she died and I would like to post it here to both honor him and his grandmother.

When I Close My Eyes
for Grandma Carow

Shriveled hands hang down from arms that once were strong
Thin white hair is now where brown hair once belonged
My fragile legs lack the strength to stand
But I know I'll walk again when I'm in the promised land

And when I close my eyes I'll see my Father
My eyes will see once again
I will run into the arms of Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes

Do not cry for me for I know to die is gain
I've lived this life for so long and now there's only pain
I must go to the healing arms of Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes

And when I close my eyes I'll see my Father
My eyes will see once again
I will run into the arms of Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes

 Where I go
 I know
 There's a mansion waiting for me
 When I look up
 I'll see
 Brilliant colors that I've never seen
 I'll join a choir of angels
 And our songs will fill the skies
 When I close these earthly eyes

And when I close these eyes I'll see my Father
My eyes will see clearly once again
I will run down a street made of gold with my Jesus
When I close these earthly eyes


sdc

Catching Up: Pictures from the last 3 months

Jen and the kids on Canyon Lake Dam in November (a family photo if you count my reflection in Jen's glasses)

Snow in the mountains above El Paso last month

Kinda makes you wish you knew how to ride a horse, don't it?

Wonderfully lonely in Rocky Mountain National Park (early December)

A new take on a familiar scene last month in Cloudcroft, New Mexico (see October Archives)

Duststorm near Odessa, Texas yesterday (this picture reminds me of the planet Luke Skywalker lived on in the Original Star Wars)

Church

From Hans Kung's book, On Being a Christian, as found in Brennan Manning's Book, A Glimpse of Jesus:
"The church of Jesus Christ is a home not only for the morally upright but for those who for a variety of reasons have not been able to honor denominational teaching. The Church is a healing community proclaiming the Father's indiscriminate love and unconditional grace, offering pardon, reconciliation and salvation to the down-trodden and leaving the judgment to God.
A Church that will not accept the fact that it consists of sinful men and exists for sinful men becomes hard-hearted, self-righteous, inhuman. It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. But if a Church with a history of fidelity and infidelity, of knowledge and error, takes seriously the fact that it is only in God's Kingdom that the wheat is separated from the tares, good fish from bad, sheep from goats, a holiness will be acknowledged in it by grace which it cannot create for itself. Such a Church is then aware that it has no need to present a spectacle of higher morality to society, as if everything in it were ordered to the best. It is aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith haltering, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of. And though it is true that the Church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance. It the Church self-righteously remains aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted."

I read this passage nearly two weeks ago and the power of it is still resonating like a church bell within my chest. The vibration inspiring and unsettling at the same time. I view it as a part of the answer, a piece of the puzzle. If you were to hold this in one hand and a call to holiness and repentance in the other, I feel you would be moving in the right direction.

The painting above is Scene at the Entrance of a Cathedral by Karl Brullhoff. For more reading on the church see the February 4th post on my friend John's blog.

A Poem, Author Unknown

The next time you are in your local bookstore browsing your way through a rainy day I would like to recommend a book to you: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. It is a wonderfully rich glimpse at among other things; the Fall of the Roman Empire, Saint Patrick, and the Irish monks who painstakingly copied ancient manuscripts that were elsewhere being destroyed by barbarians. I love the book because it is written, at times, just slightly over your head but never so far as to be out of reach and you are constantly rewarded for slogging through some of the tougher sections with these incredibly alive and downright edible portions of text that will keep you mentally munching for days afterwards. It is one of those books that not only makes you feel smarter than you are but one that actually sticks with you and well..., makes you smarter. Two sections I'll recommend for quick browsing in the store before you inevitably buy it, St. Patrick's prayer on pages 116-119 (hardcover) and pages 152 - 164 (hardcover) or just 159 - 164 if you are in a hurry. The latter section deals with the monkish scribes who actually sat down and copied word for word ancient manuscripts. It has quite a few excerpts from the notes that they would make in the margins as they either interacted with the text or fought off boredom. Hands down one of the most giddy and thrilling pieces of writing (besides Yancey and Manning) I have ever laid my eyes on. Cahill sets the scene so well, you can feel the cold, damp air through which green and rocky hills appear and recede in the fog as young bookish men attempt to keep warm while hunched over musty smelling texts. These men come to life through their various postscripts and suddenly you realize, we are not all that different, us and them. I'll leave you with an excerpt from page 162 that goes nicely with The Moussacre of 07 on my cousins' blog.

"Perhaps the clearest picture we possess of what it was like to be a scribal scholar is contained in a four stanza Irish poem slipped into a ninth-century manuscript, which otherwise contains such learned material as a Latin commentary on Virgil and a list of Greek paradigms:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his."

Not exactly groundbreaking poetry I realize, but when you consider the context, it becomes a classic. Imagine for a minute that there are no printing presses and you make a living by hand copying word for word such classics as The Catcher in the Rye or Crime and Punishment. Tedious, tedious work, the only thing keeping you from going insane with boredom is your love for the written word. As you copy you entertain yourself by making up little poems in your head that help you pass the time. And then in one heady and mischevious moment you decide to write your poem in the margin or at the bottom of the page, a bold act that declares "I am here! I matter!" This poem is not just about the words, because of its context, it is one of the most essentially human poems I've read, containing the essence of what it is to live down here. "You are not forgotten anonymous Irish scribe, 1200 years later your poem still rings true. For chutzpah alone you are a legend in my mind, may we meet in heaven one day where you can introduce me to Virgil and I will introduce you to Helprin."

How the Irish Saved Civilization was the first of what is now five and will eventually be seven books in the Hinges of History series by Thomas Cahill. I have also read The Gift of the Jews and would recommend it as well. His latest is called Mysteries of the Middle Ages, a book so beautiful it caused drool to run down my chin as I browsed through it mouth agape at the bookstore last month.

Patty Griffin @ Gruene Hall

Last night, Patty Griffin opened a brief tour in support of her new album children running through at the beautiful and ancient Gruene Hall. It was a rare cold and rainy night here in South Texas that amplified the warmth and beauty of Patty's voice. The roughly three to four hundred people crammed into the hall soaked up every note, screaming for two encores. Unfortunately, I was not among them. Despite the fact that Gruene Hall is only two miles from my house I was unable to score tickets to the concert. But that didn't stop me from listening to the entire show, standing on the lawn outside the venue, in what turned out to be one of the neatest concerts I've been to.

Built on a bluff overlooking the Guadalupe River sometime in the 1880's, Gruene Hall looks as if every piece of wood in the place is original to the structure. On warm nights large wooden shutters are opened and standing out on the lawn you can see in through the chicken wire that covers the open windows and watch the show going on inside. When it's cold and rainy like last night they close the shutters but the building is so rustic and porous that in addition to hearing the music at concert decibels, occasionaly through large gaps you can see parts of the stage. In a rare stroke of bad luck, a speaker blocked my view last night so that all I could see on the times I tried were the bass player and Patty's mic stand. But, I was not there for the view, I was there for the music and it was outstanding. Unless you have one of those quirky college stations in your town you will never hear Patty Griffin on the radio despite the fact that she is the greatest female singer on the planet right now. Slightly raspy, melancholic, lyrical, angelic - Jen describes her voice in the following way, "I can see her singing on a dirty street, and fitting in there, yet somehow rising above, transcending it." A brilliant songwriter, she has written songs covered by the Dixie Chicks, Emmylou Harris, Martina Mcbride and several others. And I can attest, her voice in person loses none of the power that comes through in her recordings.

I love the roar of the crowd when the first notes of an old favorite begin to play. Standing outside, a large grin slowly spreading replaced a scream when I heard favorites like Making Pies, Kite Song, Truth No. 2, and Top of the World. She sang a few from her new album including the brilliant, Heavenly Day and one I'd never heard before Re: Mary, that I looked for but couldn't find on iTunes when I got home. In the beginning I was joined by a couple slow dancing in the rain, but they left after a few songs and I was alone until the first encore when I was joined by a carpenter from San Antonio who was recently turned on to Patty Griffin by a friend, and a tennis instructor from South Africa (living in Texas) who had a couple of CD jackets he was hoping to get autographed. We had a great conversation about our mutual love for Patty's voice before somehow the conversation turned to Bob Dylan. All in all it was a great night, spent alone and then with fellow diehards listening to one of the special voices of our time in a truly historic setting. It will be a long time before I forget, if ever, standing outside under the water tower watching smoke curl up from the chimney of that old wooden dance hall into a night sky heavy with mist as an angelic voice sang out "strange how hard it rains now, rows and rows of big dark clouds, when I'm still alive underneath this shroud, rain." Alive, yes, very much so.