Category: History

A Dad’s Inspiration

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

In the last fifteen years or so, I have really tried to start paying attention to my Dad. I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, I don’t remember. I know it sounds like I completely ignored him. That is not the case. My parents are not getting any younger, mid-sixties at this point. I have read too many stories about people who didn’t take the time to realize their time was limited. They neglected to take advantage of these folks while they are still around!

That sounds a little dark… basically, I want to listen and take to heart what they have to tell me. The other day, I took two of my kids to their house. I was sitting in their living room, just chatting. My dad happened to mention something to me. We were talking about my oldest girl, Katarina, and he said that I needed to take the time to listen to her, really listen to her.

Don’t get me wrong, Kat and I talk a lot. She is also a writer (like her Daddy). Kat often writes down her thoughts and feelings in the form of stories, songs, verses, and even psalms. What if I read what she wrote with the goal of understanding her emotional world? He said she would teach me. I would become a person she felt like she can rely on even more. I knew she would write when she was having a hard time. I did the same thing at her age. Heck, I do it now. Some of you have read those articles.

“What our kids say (or, in this case, write) can really impact us,” he said. “Let me show you something.” He led me into the dining room, a weird place for this, but there it is. He showed me something I wrote for a school assignment when I was fifteen (pictured above). A year below where Kat is now, fifteen. This simple little sheet of paper was something my Dad had paid attention to. “For decades now,” he said. “I have been trying to live up to your words on that paper. I haven’t always been capable, but it has been my goal. To be the man that you thought I was. I wanted you to feel proud that I was your Dad.”

He had paid attention to what I wrote and listened well. Advice from a fourteen-year-old isn’t something the world often listens to. Teenagers are teenagers after all, but I am really trying to listen to my own teenagers; my own kids, when they talk, write, sing, etc. They are speaking to me, in the best ways they know how. It isn’t always respectful. It isn’t always super clear, but I am listening. You may not believe the teens around you are listening. But, if you take the time to listen, they will too. Let me tell you a quick story.

I don’t remember how old I was, but it was around the time I wrote that thing about my dad. I wanted to play basketball. It’s crazy because I am about as talented at sports as I am at being a rocket scientist. That means not at all. Anyway, my way of shooting a basket was to do a granny shot. If you don’t know what that is, think of the stupidest way to shoot a basketball, and then double it.

Video of a “granny shot” in action.

Now, the kid in that video makes this look like it’s a great idea… it is not. Be prepared to be made fun of a LOT if you happen to try to play basketball this way. Trust me, I know from experience. I argued back and forth with my dad about this. I tried to tell him that I knew what I was talking about. That this was how I knew to shoot the ball and that it was fine. He disagreed. In fact, he eventually got really frustrated with how I wasn’t listening to him and gave up. Telling me that if I wasn’t going to listen, then I could just do it any way I wanted. We had begun yelling at each other, fighting about how to play basketball.

He went inside the house. He vented to my Mom about how I didn’t listen to him. He was frustrated that I acted like a teenager who knew it all. He was very frustrated with me. An hour or so later though, my cousins came over to play and what did we decide to do? Play basketball of course. My Mom went over to the window and cracked it open as played. Then, she called my Dad over and made him sit down to listen to us. As my cousins and I played the game, I repeated my Dad’s words to them, verbatim! I was also doing my best to shoot the ball exactly as my Dad has shown me.

As a teen, I was too stuborn to admit he was right to his face, but I listened. As the handwritten note above states, I respected my Dad. I listened to him even when, in my teenage angst, I may not have admitted it to his face. So my fellow parents out there, your teens are listening. Your kids in general are listening. Are you taking the time to listen to them speak? I am trying and it is worth your time to do the same. If you listen, they will listen.

D. Michl Lowe

Chrono Trigger and the Death of My Friend

D. Michl Lowe3 Comments

I’m starting to understand what Anne Rice harped on so often in her Vampire Chronicles so much. Eternal life here on Earth would not be as great as some might believe it would be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I could make it work, but it wouldn’t be all unicorns and rainbows like you might first believe. In the Vampire Chronicles, the vampire Lestat, the most famous vampire after Dracula I would argue, often laments being “alive” for so long. Vampires often have to go into decades-long hibernation just to be able to deal with living so long.

The loss and pain of losing others tend to catch up to these creatures and cause massive amounts of pain and depression. I have lost more people in my life than I thought I would by this point in my life. Currently, I am 41 years old, and I can think of many friends that I have already lost to death and many more family members. I would like to talk about one of these that has been on my mind here recently and why I miss him. For the sake of anyone who might know these folks and be sad with me, I am going to use a fake name.

When I was a kid, I had a good friend. I know, shocking that I had a friend, but I did. And this friend was a great guy. I will call him Charles. When I was around eight years old, Charles and I’s entire relationship consisted of playing Nintendo and using the Game Genie to try to find ways to make Mario invincible so we could actually beat Super Mario 3. We were terrible at it. He would come to my house and spend the night and we would stay up to all hours of the night playing games together, going on adventures, and discovering new worlds through my little 13-inch TV.  Later on, I got a new 25-inch TV and we thought we had died and gone to gaming heaven, it was so big!

When I was around 14 years old, we had upgraded our gaming to the Super Nintendo and one weekend Charles brought over a game on a Friday night that he had borrowed from a friend for the weekend. We started playing Chrono Trigger, a Japanese RPG, at around 6:00 p.m. We saw the credits roll at around 8:00 a.m. the next morning. It was the first time I had ever stayed up all night. It also helped that Chrono Trigger is one of the greatest games of all time. The story sucked us in. Time travel, revenge, and alien invaders who are trying to literally eat the Earth kept us glued to the TV set.

Charles and I grew apart after High School. The next time I heard about him, my mother was telling me that he had died. We never heard what had killed him, he was still really young. I was at the end of my time in college at MVNU and I remember Dad asking if I wanted to go to the funeral. I said yes. We went and I remember seeing his family there, but I don’t think they recognized me. I’m sure they were in shock. It was so sudden after all. It was one of the first times I had lost a childhood friend. To this day, I drive past his old house and always… always think about my friend.

Every year, I play through Chrono Trigger at least once. I play through the adventure I had with my friend and think about the first time I went on this journey. How childhood felt like it had been forgotten, we were adults; staying up late and doing what we wanted. We could save the world from the comfort of my bedroom. We could be heroes and leave the confines of a little holler in Sissonville to roam a new and magical world, if only for a little while. Just one night. For just one night we were more than just little boys, trying to understand the world and our place in it. Charles was a good friend. He was my friend and I will always remember him.

I guess, I just miss my friend.

D. Michl Lowe

The Lesson I Learned from an Icee

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I’ve often thought about how some memories are stuck in my mind, and others seem to have slipped away from me. For instance, I remember waking up when I was five years old from a nap on the floor of my room. I don’t know why I wasn’t in my bed; I assume I was playing and merely slept where I was. That said, I awoke to a puppy licking my face. I don’t remember anything after that, but I remember the first time Samson, my golden retriever pup, and I met. It’s adhered to my mind.

I remember walking down the hill to the neighbor’s house, having been invited to come over for a cap gun battle, only to be ambushed on my way down by the three neighbor girls wielding their cap guns and blasting me away after jumping out from behind the trees that lined the hill. I don’t remember anything else from that day, but I remember being surprised and happy.

Yesterday, I was brought back to another time in my memory. My wife and kids and I had gone to Sam’s Club to get a couple necessities. In particular, I needed a new pair of jeans. I tend to kill pants. I’ve tried $100 jeans and $45 jeans and everything in between. However, no matter the price or the claims of the brand, the pants tend to die on me after about six months. So, several cycles ago, after a recommendation from my dad, I purchased my first pair of $10 jeans (although they have increased in price now to $14). These jeans lasted me, surprise, six months before giving up the ghost. So now, I buy cheap $14 jeans and save myself some money.

Anyway, after shopping for jeans and all the other random stuff you pick up at Sam’s that you never intended to buy before walking in there, we paid for our items and my wife walked over to the snack center and got the kids some Icee Slurpies as a treat. She took their picture as they stood there enjoying the sweets. However, my mind was taken back. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a lot of money. I don’t think we were poor, but there wasn’t a lot of money for things like Icee’s. My neighbor and her three girls and my mom and I often did things together during the day. They were home-schooled and I was an only child. So by default, we were all the best of friends.

One day though, my neighbor’s husband got a promotion at work. As such, when we went into the local K-Mart, all of us kids got an Icee as a rare treat. I know some of you reading this might think that it’s odd to believe that an Icee could stick out in my mind, but maybe the remainder of the story will clue you in as to why. Our neighbor, Chris, handed each of her kids an Icee.

Ashley got an Icee, and her response was, “Thank you!”

Courtney got an Icee, and her response was, “Thank you!”

Angie got an Icee, and her response was, “Thank you!”

And finally, Michl (me) gets an Icee, and his response is SLURP! SLURP! SLURP!

Suddenly, my Icee is gone, as if it has merely vanished from my hand. Looking up, I see my mom standing there, slurping on my Icee. She raises her eyebrows and glances down at me. I am shocked.

“Next time, you will remember to say thank you,” she says and walks away with my Icee.

She drank the entire thing. The saddest part is, she doesn’t even like cherry Icees. There was a similar lesson that happened earlier in my life with a Snickers bar, but that’s a story for another time. Some of you may think the lesson cruel, I’m sure. However, while I am sure I did cry, I don’t remember crying. What I remember was a lesson my mom taught me. To this day, I remember to be polite. It was ingrained into me to show respect and thankfulness to someone who is kind to me. It was a big deal for Mrs. Chris to buy us those Icee’s. At the time, the amount of money it took to buy all of us kids those Icee’s was a lot for her, and at that time, I didn’t show appreciation for that. True, I was just a little kid, but it was important for me to recognize the value of what I was getting. Just like a pair of jeans that obviously aren’t worth $100 to someone like me who is just going to kill them in six months, an Icee to a mom who is pinching pennies for the good of her family is a big deal. And it was a big deal to us, but I didn’t recognize it for what it was and my mom wanted to reinforce that value of thankfulness. She wanted to engrain that value into my head enough that I would remember it. I don’t remember crying, but I remember the lesson.

I was standing over to the side waiting for my wife to get the Icees for the kids and I didn’t hear if they said thank you to her when she handed them the treats. So, I can’t say if the direct lesson has been passed down to my own offspring. However, I can tell you that they are thankful for the blessings they have. True, like all kids, they must be reminded from time to time, but I think the value has been instilled. So, as I sit here sipping my coffee and thinking back, I must smile, I have a good momma, who taught me how to live life in gratitude and thankfulness; not just to her and my dad, but to God for all the blessings I have been given. I hope in the end I am able to give back some of that blessing to others.

D. Michl Lowe

One Last Hug

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I had a dream about a dead person. A person I knew long ago. I didn’t know this person as an adult, I knew them when I was just a kid, a kid in high school. In the dream, we were at a festival of some kind, there was music, and people milling around talking and having fun. People were meeting with old friends and chatting, there was laughter and good food. This person and I were going to perform in some way, I don’t know how maybe we were going to sing. Anyway, this friend of mine was doing some stage makeup for me.

This wouldn’t have been uncommon for this person to do this for me back in the day. They often did our makeup before the performances I was in; of which there were many. Anyway, she was doing my makeup, talking to me, gently whipping away mistakes, and just being their normal self. Suddenly, the haze of the dream was drawn away from my eyes and saw her. I knew she had died and knew I was in a dream. I stood up with intense sadness in my heart and began crying, the tears rushing down my cheeks.

Then she stood with me. “You’re dead,” I cried. “I know you’re dead, but you’re here.”

“I am here,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s really okay.”

I stepped forward and hugged my friend. It was a hug from years and years ago. When I was just a kid who was hugging a friend that he loved. She cried too, but her tears were not tears of sadness, but of joy that she was able to hug her friend again. I realized I was the only sad person at the festival. The people were around us were talking, laughing, and loving each other in friendship and family. It was a beautiful thing, and yet I continued to be sad.

I woke up, tears wetting my pillow, stunned. I’ve had several dreams like this in the last couple of years. Dreams where I have seen friends of mine who have gone on before me into the afterlife. My mother-in-law always says that when you dream about someone, that’s the Lord’s way of bringing that person into your mind to have you pray for them. What do I do with dreams of the dead though? I’m not completely sure. What I do know is that I pray for their families and those left behind.

I’ve lost several friends and family in the last several years and I think that may be catching up to me. Loss is a difficult thing. Sometimes, you weren’t as close as you would have liked to have been. Sometimes you were very close and the loss seemed personal, like the person’s death was a slight against you. Not that they wanted to leave, but that God wanted to harm you by taking them. The sadness and anger can be almost overwhelming. I don’t feel angry. I don’t blame God. Maybe I haven’t been hurt enough to feel that. All I know is, I miss my friend, and I’m glad I got to give her one last hug.

D. Michl Lowe

Why I’m Not Afraid of Dragons Anymore

D. Michl Lowe3 Comments

I was part of a writing group for a while. I’m not going to name names, because it’s not important to the story. However, for some time now, I have been scared… of dragons. Let me explain. This was nearly ten years ago and my writing career was still very new. I hadn’t finished my first book, in fact, I hadn’t really even started it yet. However, I was a passionate and ignorant new writer. I was finishing up a master’s degree and would meet with the group at a local coffee shop once a month and submit a passage from the fantasy book I was playing at writing.

One lady was finishing up her second novel in an adventure book series she was writing and I remember being in awe of her. She had a book on Amazon for sale! She was making money from a book she had written! She was, gasp, published! Now, my ignorance at the time was that I didn’t even know that such as thing as self-publishing even existed, much less ideas like vanity publishing and traditional publishing, or publishing agents. This was all still a mystery to this newbie, heck no one knows what they don’t know, and I am most likely still in the dark about many aspects of these things.

I remember she got done reading a short passage I had written in which I had mentioned a dragon. She looked at me and said, “Dragons are on the way out. Publishers won’t publish a story about a dragon because it’s cliche now. Also, never mention a sword, there are too many fantasy stories about magical swords and dragons out there, and you will never get published if you have those things in your story.”

My author admiration was in full effect. She was the only person I had ever met who had finished writing a book, much less had one “published”. Oddly enough, I looked up her book recently and realized that she was self-published through Amazon. Now don’t let me mislead you here, that is still impressive. This is how my books are published as well. However, in my ignorance, her advice to me at the time took on much more significant weight than it should have. After writing three slightly successful books (to me anyway), and now working on my biggest project yet, The Fantasy Book Project, I am ready to admit something. I don’t like her advice. In fact, I am no longer following it. When I first sat down to write out the notes for my world and create the story, her rules of no swords and no dragons were still engrained in my mind, almost unconsciously. I had creatures in my books that I called Beasts, but let’s be honest, as I described them, and inside my head; they were dragons.

Now, none of my characters currently have a sword, but I am not against the idea any longer. The more I read and the newer books I see published, fantasy publishers are only worried about one thing, will the book be bought and read by people. I am one of the biggest fans of traditional, modern, and even odd fantasy and I am not tired of dragons. I like dragons. In fact, you put a dragon on the cover of the book and you have my attention. Throw a Gandalf-looking fella fighting that dragon on the cover and my wallet basically slips out of my pocket on its own.

These ten years into my writing career, here is my writing advice to aspiring writers, for what that is worth.

  1. Write what you know.
  2. Write who you know.
  3. Write what you want.

Let me quickly talk about each of those in a little more detail.

Number 1: Write what you know. Use your own life experiences to create realistic narratives, characters, and situations. Some of the most compelling stories I have read have come from or been inspired by an author’s real-life experiences. I believe this is a great way to write.

Number 2: Write who you know. Use the people that you know, meet, or get a chance to interact with as subjects to inspire characters in your books. As an example, I read once that Hayao Miyazaki (the famous anime artist) uses real girls he knows as inspiration for the girls he draws in his animes. Also, I remember reading that Charles Dickens did this a lot too. According to the book Mr. Dickens and His Carol, by Samantha Silva, it is a well-known fact that Mr. Dickens kept a notebook full of names he encountered. Apparently, the ghost Jacob Marley was based on a man Mr. Dickens met one time and felt that he was very unpleasant. Ms. Silva tells us that he then wrote down the name and decided that whatever character he turned out to be, he would be dead very quickly. As such, Jacob Marley is dead before the book even starts. Anyway, use real people to give your characters realistic personalities and life, just don’t use the person’s real name. That will get you sued.

Number 3: Write what you want. This is the one I am taking for myself. If you want to write about your dog, write about your dog. If you want to write about starships, write about starships. And by goodness, if you want to write about dragons, write about dragons! Don’t allow the fear of being or not being published to scare you off from writing a story you want to write. Write your book and after submitting it to a publisher, if they come back and say they don’t want dragons in your book and can you change it? Heh, there is a “find” option in Microsoft Word where you can find every single instance of a word in your whole document and it’s easy to replace the word “dragon” with “kitten.”

Side Note: Take my advice with a complete grain of salt.

D. Michl Lowe

Even Stuffies Have Scars

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My daughter came to me with her stuffed bear. We referred to all stuffed animals as a “stuffy”, or the plural form, “stuffies”.  She was maybe three years old and already the bear had issues. His fur was bare in many places, rubbed off from love. The velvet of his nose was rubbed down to the plastic underneath. He had both of his eyes, but he had been hugged and drug around our house so much that his stuffing had been compressed. When I say compressed, I mean that he looked like a limp rag just out of the wash, but my daughter loved him. She loved him a lot.

We had no idea where this particular stuffy had come from. When we had our first child, many gifts came into the house from so many generous people that often, where things came from getting lost in the shuffle. However, whatever generous person got my daughter this bear may never know the impact they had on her life with that gift. Not to embarrass her, but she is currently thirteen and still sleeps with this bear. So back to the point, at the age of six, my daughter came to me and said, “Daddy, my bear is all lumpy. Can you fix him?”

I looked at the little rumpled thing, its head flopping off to one side. By all accounts, this thing should be thrown into the trash. As mentioned above, this little stuffy had been worn down the quick, in my eyes he was worth nothing more than the bin for sure. However, when I looked at my daughter, that was not an option. In her eyes, this was a precious companion; useful, needed, important, and loved. Throwing him away was not an option, giving up on him was not an option.

I took the bear in hand and looked him over. “I can restuff him,” I said. “But he is going to have a scar.” I can sew, but I can’t sew well. However, while my wife does sew, she hates doing it, so the task falls to me. I am the clear choice when it comes to these tasks. That being said, I knew the stitches would show when I was done. She agreed. I took some stuffing, a pair of scissors, and my needle and thread and got to work. I snipped open the little bear’s hip and began the process of replacing the stuffing inside. When the stuffing was complete, I sewed his hip back up. As I had warned my daughter, the stitches showed; there was a scar. Over the years, many a stuffy in our home received scars from “stuffy surgery” by my hand.

I think about this and wonder if this is how God thinks about us. We may look at someone who seems worn out, wasted, lost, and by all accounts ragged. But God, just like my daughter sees someone precious, worthy, and in need. He calls out to us to reach out and heal this person, but we reject the idea. If I get involved, I’m not going to be able to help. There will be scars. God is okay with scars. In fact, I think sometimes he uses our scars to remind us to turn back to him. He calls us to intervene in the lives of others, even if our help might produce some scars. Scars are evidence that healing has been done. They are evidence that someone cares enough to request the healing for us.

D. Michl Lowe

Would I Marry My Wife Again?

D. Michl Lowe1 Comment

On a recent trip back to my and Alicia’s university where we met, my kids asked me an interesting question. “Daddy,” they asked. “Are you and mommy going to renew your wedding vows at MVNU when you get there?” I purposed to Alicia at the gazebo down in the grove at MVNU and then we got married in the very spot where I purposed, in the gazebo. So that particular place holds a great deal of meaning to us as a couple. However, in the car that day, I told the kids, “No, I don’t feel the need to renew my vows to Alicia because I still love her and my vows hold just as strong today as they did back then.” But it got me thinking. Alicia and I just celebrated our 18th year of marriage on June 5th of this year, 2022. Looking back, would I do it all again? Would I marry this girl who I fell in love with back in 2000 and then married in 2004? Would I go through it all again?

Alicia and I met in September of 2000 in a field at MVNU in the middle of campus. My roommate at the time introduced us and she was sitting on the ground eating a hotdog with her roommate. I just said hi, and didn’t really think much about it… she was just a girl. Not really knowing my roommate very well (we didn’t know each other before coming to school) and of course not knowing her, I could have never expected what the future would hold. But we became friends. We started to hang out at school and over time, she became more than just my friend. There were struggles during our dating relationship. There was learning that had to take place. I had to come to an understanding of who this gentle girl was. She was unlike anyone else I had ever been interested in. She was completely different than me. I am loud, excitable, passionate, and silly. She is quiet, withdrawn at times, and gentle.

Here’s the thing though, she was wonderfully unique. She wasn’t like the typical girls I would have gone for. She was different, but so very much what I needed. She grounded me in a way. Brought me back to earth. When I would get flighty or would become too much, she would help to bring me back. She was/is honest with me. Men in particular need a lady to ground them. There are a lot of good things about men. Lots to like about these burly boys, but it takes a woman to help those boys truly become men. Not saying you have to have a lady to be a real man, not at all, but I will say this… becoming a true man is much harder to do without a good lady at your side. Together, men and women make each other better. I know choice in a mate is important too, but in general, I would say I am correct, that men and women make each other better. The weakness of masculinity is made strong with the feminine. The weakness of the feminine is made strong in the masculine.

Can you find Nikolai in this photo? He’s hiding.

With Alicia and I, I think we have made each other better. I am a better man because of her. What is it Tom Cruise said, “you complete me”? I don’t know if that’s the right idea, because I have always said that two incomplete people make for a poor couple, but in our case, while I don’t consider us half-people, I do know that knowing her, loving her, and being with her has made me a better person. She doesn’t complete me, but I am “complete”ly in love with her. More so today than yesterday.

So, would I marry her again? Yes. Would I have children with her again? Yes. Would I go through the struggles we’ve had with Kat again with her? Yes. Would I go through all the strife of finding lost Grandparents with her again? Yes. Would I go through Nikolai being put into the NICU again? Yes. Would I go through the struggles of early marriage finances and even struggles in finances today again? Yes. All of everything that has been hard, that has been said, that has left us feeling lost, unhappy, fearful, misunderstood, and mourning. Would I go through all of that again? Would I put my trust in Christ to lead me down the road he has? Would I take her hand again in all of everything that life has to offer us and look into that uncertainty and struggle again with her again?

Yes.

With no hesitation, yes.

My darling, my love, the very flesh of my flesh. I love you. I will love you; I have loved you, and I will continue to love you. You are mine, and I am forever yours. I will fail you, disappoint you, and someday, I might even lose you… but I want you to know that I love you and nothing is changing that.

I love you.

D. Michl Lowe

A Christian Response to Gun Violence

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December 29th, 2019 was a day that the membership of West Freeway Church of Christ in Texas will likely never forget. A man who they had fed several times and shown the love of Christ to in the past came into church that day dressed in a long black trench coat and a fake beard. The church security team was put on alert and they positioned themselves close to the man, just in case. During the service, he got up and went to the back of the church to talk to one of the security personnel and then opened fire with a shotgun he had hidden under his coat.

He killed two members of the congregation before one of the security team persons, Jack Wilson, pulled a firearm and shot the man, ending the rampage. It was a horrific ordeal that left the church and the nation stunned. Not long after, on January 13th, 2019, The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbot placed The Medal of Courage around Jack Wilson’s neck. Speaking to a small crowd, the Governor said,

“Only God knows who is alive today because of Jack Wilson. What we do know is that so many lives were saved because of Jack Wilson’s quick action, his calmness under pressure, and, above all else, his courage and his willingness to risk his own life to save the lives of others.”

Speaking about what happened during the incident, Jack would say,

“The events at West Freeway Church of Christ put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in, but evil exists and I had to take out an active shooter in church. I am very sad about the loss of two dear friends and brothers in Christ, but evil does exist in this world and I and other members are not going to allow evil to succeed.”

Later on, after receiving The Medal of Courage he said,

“I feel more as a protector than I do a hero. I feel very honored that God allowed me to have that capability to do what needed to be done at that particular time… I don’t feel like I killed an individual. I feel like I killed evil. That’s how I’m approaching it and that’s how I’m processing [it].”

So why am I talking about a mass shooting? How should Christian men respond to these types of situations? Am I saying that all Christian men should be carrying guns every day? No. Am I saying that Christian men should embrace a life that may lead them toward violence? Maybe. Am I saying that as a man of Christ you should be prepared to do what Christ would call us to do in terms of loving people enough to sacrifice our own comfort, innocence, and bloodless hands? Absolutely! As a man, you have been called to love your neighbors, protecting others should be something we not only think about but something we actively prepare to do.

In Mathew 22: 37-40, Jesus is talking to a Pharisee who has asked Him which is the greatest commandment of the law, and he said,  

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Mathew 22:37-40

Christ calls us to lay down our lives in love for others. To allow a moral evil, like the one present when a person is seeking to commit murder, rape, abduction, or the like; is to put aside the love you have for the victim of that sin. David French, in his article for the National Review, called The Biblical and Natural Right of Self Defense says,

“While the New Testament certainly removes from the individual Christian any justification for vengeance (leaving vengeance to God’s agent, the state) – lex talionis (eye for an eye) was always a rule of proportionate justice, not self-defense. In fact, Jesus’s disciples carried swords, and Jesus even said in some contexts the unarmed should arm themselves (Luke 22:36). The sword’s use was only specifically forbidden when Peter used violence to block Christ’s specific purpose to lay down his life.”

We have been called to be prepared for Christ’s sake. In 1st Corinthians 16:13, it says,

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” Corinthians 16:13

Be watchful; in other words, be prepared and ready to respond in the way Christ would have you to respond. If we are to truly love the helpless, the weak, and our neighbor; as we love ourselves then we must protect them in whatever way we can. Now I hear your questions and statements already.

Just because we are called to “love our neighbors” as ourselves does that mean we must protect them by killing?

That seems extreme I hear some of you saying. People die as martyrs. Sacrificing themselves for the faith, have you thought of that?

You know, the next verse in Corinthians 16, the 14th verse says, “And whatever you do, do it with kindness and love.” Does killing someone seem kind or loving to you?!

Let me address these concerns. When we are talking about the possibility of killing someone, we don’t take this action lightly. Nothing about this act is a good thing, beyond your love for those you are attempting to protect. If there is literally any other way to address the situation, that way should be taken; period! Is it extreme? Of course, it’s extreme, that’s why it’s sad and harmful, even for the person who is forced to do it.

What about being a martyr? Shouldn’t Christians welcome the ability to stand up for the faith in death? It is honorable to die for the faith, but that is a calling from Christ that an individual must make for themselves in a prayerful moment or beforehand during a time of crisis. When it is known that this possibility exists you can prepare for that action. If you are able to understand the nature of the world you inhabit and you are willing to die to further the causes of Christ, and that Christ has specifically called you to this end.

What about that 14th verse in Chapter 16 of Corinthians, “And whatever you do, do it with kindness and love”? Doesn’t that speak directly against what you are saying?

Not at all. Within the call to action in kindness and love is the understanding that giving a response to aberrant behavior is not unloving or unkind. An alternate understanding might be that we are giving justice and in that continuing to show love to the victims of evil. Proverbs 21:15 even tells us, “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.”

Also, in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis explained, “’Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment — even to death. If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged.’ Capital punishment may or may not be good public policy, but we ought not oppose it because we are supposed to “love” everybody. Failing to punish a dangerous criminal is not behaving with love toward the rest of our neighbors.”

Coming back to the idea of being a martyr, we must also understand our role as a man of Christ and the consideration that our death would impact others around us. We must not search out or condone our own death when doing so would bring others further from or outside of an understanding of Christ’s saving grace. If allowing myself to die would give my family the cause to fall further from an understanding of the love of Christ, then I must do all I can to maintain my life and the life of those I am within reach of to help them in their pursuit of Christ.

David French lays out the self-defense argument nicely in the same article. He says,

“…the morality of self-defense is not only presumed, the act of self-defense is permitted and even mandated by key Biblical figures. This principle flows of course from a moral law that reveres human life. It should be protected, not merely avenged. Nehemiah, when he was rebuilding Jerusalem in the face of hatred (not in wartime, but when tribal neighbors were seeking to carry out vigilante attacks on Jews) instructed his people: “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” (Nehemiah 4:14).”

As the men of Christ, we have a responsibility to live into the role Christ has cast for us in whatever way we are able. Some of us might see carrying a gun for defense as a moral blight. I have often thought about King David when looking at the possibility of having to take a life. David was seen as a man after God’s own heart, but he is also seen as the warrior king. In fact, he was not even allowed to build God’s temple because he had shed too much blood. 1 Chronicles 22:8 says,

“But this word of the Lord came to me: ‘You have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for my Name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight.” 1 Chronicles 22:8

David was following God’s commands throughout his military campaigns. Even when we look at his battle with Goliath where David clearly took a life (in a rather gruesome way); he was also following the commands of God in doing so. Were the deaths at David’s hands insignificant then? No, they weren’t or he would have been worthy to construct the temple. So, while he was not committing sin to slay his enemies, God felt that those deaths were a stain on David in some non-sinful way. This makes sense because any time a life is lost it’s no small thing, to us or to God. This is one of the burdens of being a man.

In times of great peril, we are often called into dishonoring ourselves with blood.

While this is not sin, it is still a blight upon your soul and mind. You would literally never be the same person. The mental, spiritual, and even physical burdens that this ordeal places upon a person are great indeed. God realizes this. I believe this is why David was told that he was not the one who was going to build the temple. Let’s remember, however, that David’s son Solomon, was given the honor of building the temple. His father sacrificed his own honor, taking on the blight and stench of death, and in the end, his son was able to gain great honor for God by being the one to build it.

David was the warrior King so that Solomon might rule in relative wealth and prominence. As men, we are at times called to follow in the footsteps of David and kill so that others might live. There is pain, heartache, sorrow, and depression in taking on this burden, but that is the mantle we are called to take up. The possibility of dishonoring ourselves for the sake of others is real and should be taken seriously. Did Christ not do this for us, take on shame and sin in our stead? As Christ has done, we should do likewise.

D. Michl Lowe

I found Robert Jordan’s house

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Me standing at the gates to Robert Jordan’s mansion with the white dragon banner flying off the porch.

I may get some flak for this article and to some degree, I think it might even be warranted. However, I feel like I need to write it and talk about it so that is what I am going to do. In March of 2022, my wife and I decided to take our first-ever cruise. We were on a pretty small ship, apparently, comparing our ship to the many others when we would pull into ports, but the smallness did afford us something quite nice; we were able to go ashore in Charleston SC. I am not a fan of large cities, but if I am going to go to one, Charleston SC is just about my favorite.

I enjoy walking around the city. I enjoy the food in the city. I enjoy the atmosphere of this city. I enjoy the history of this city. So many things about this place that I really love, which is odd, because basically every other city on Earth, I despise.

Well, we came into port and had several hours to kill in Charleston. I had two things on my mind, one was that I was getting a cold and needed to head to a pharmacy so that I could get some cold medication and the other, was that I wanted to find Robert Jordan’s house. Some of you might not know who Robert Jordan is, so let me just take a moment and explain who this guy was. Robert Jordan was the main author of the Wheel of Time series of books. This is a fifteen-book series that was written from 1990 to 2013. Robert Jordan died on September 16th, 2007 from primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy, basically it’s a blood disease that caused the walls of his heart to thicken. He wasn’t able to actually finish the series, but when he got his diagnosis and the doctors said that he would most likely only get about four more years of life, he wrote down as many notes as he could so that someone else could finish the last book for him.

RJ’s driveway with the white dragon gates open.

When he passed away, his wife and editor Harriet McDougal chose author Brandon Sanderson to finish the last novel for her late husband. When all the notes and information had been poured over, it was clear that one book was not going to be enough to actually finish the series and so Brandon actually wrote the last three books of the series and he is pretty much universally praised for his work on it. He has been widely respected and seen as a master of the craft and possibly the only person who could have written the story in how he did and given it the respect and breath it required. So, all that being said, Robert Jordan’s house was in Charleston SC and I wanted to find it. It should be noted, that his house is not a public place where you can just go tour it or anything. I mean Harriet still lives there from what I understand and it is of course private property.

However, I didn’t want to trespass or create any form of disturbance. I knew he lived in Charleston SC and I knew his front gate was white and had dragons carved into the front of it. Alicia and I had a few more clues, but nothing close to what might be considered an address. This is because of course; this is a private residence. Now, let me take a moment and talk about Charleston for a moment. It might sound bad that I am trying to find a personal residence and want to take a picture in front of it. However, that’s a fairly normal thing to do in Charleston. In fact, many houses even have plaques on the side of their gates or walls that tell you who used to live there or who the house is famous for in some way. So, people walking around looking at houses and taking pictures in front of them is fairly normal. That being said, I am not going to tell you how to find RJ’s house.

The garden of the mansion.

We walked around following the small bread crumbs I had found through google searches and it seemed hopeless. We were nearly out of time and needed to be heading back towards the boat. I was convinced that we weren’t going to find it and had come to peace about that. We decided to turn down one final street that was heading back towards our boat anyway, and there it was. Directly in front of me was a white gate, two dragons carved into the front of it. “There it is!” I yelped. I stopped on the other side of the street, feeling like I couldn’t get closer. As if crossing the street would be treading on holy ground. “Well get over there so I can take your picture,” Alicia said. I didn’t want to move. The gate was open, I could see RJ’s front porch, and the Dragon Banner was flying from his porch just like I had heard it would be.

The white gates to the mansion with carved dragons on them.

Alicia finally convinced me to stand by the gate and get my picture taken in front of the house. I did peak in the garden through the rot iron fence and if you look closely in some of the pictures, you can see the carriage house that is behind the mansion which is where The Wheel of Time books were actually written. RJ did his writing back there. Apparently, the entire building is full of books, and maps, and at the very back his computer and desk chair. I looked through that garden and for the life of me felt like I was being given a glimpse into some hidden world, like dying for only a moment and getting to see Heaven without being allowed to stay. As soon as my pictures were taken and I had taken that moment to drink in the awe, I purposefully moved on and didn’t linger. I didn’t want to disturb Harriet. I didn’t want to spoil the magic of the place with the reality of myself.

Another view of the garden and the brick building in the back of the photo with the chimney is the carriage house, where the wheel of time was written.

We walked back to the ship and I felt like I was walking through a dream. I had glimpsed magic I was never meant to see. I had dipped my toe into the world of a master of the art. I have written books. I have written stories and articles, but for all the world I feel like an ant next to a giant. There is a hope inside my heart that someday my writings will be beloved and pined over. There isn’t an understanding that I am on or will be on the same plane as a man like RJ, but I have some hope that I can stand in the shadow of that greatness and at least feel the warmth of the sun. I will never forget that day and being able to stand so close to where such beloved magic was created. Maybe some of that magic has rubbed off on me. If nothing else, I have been deeply inspired.  

D. Michl Lowe

When I Die, Freeze Me And Pound Me In The Ground

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My mother used to say, “When I die, just freeze me and pound me in the ground.” This is a great saying and honestly made me really think about what I wanted to be done when I died. Maybe that’s a morbid thing to talk about or think about, but honestly, it’s never been that big of a deal to me. My death is not the end of me. I know where I’m going and while I might not know all the details of what is going to happen, I am ready for it should it come soon. I do not fear death.

So I have been thinking about it for a long time now and I have realized that I am unlike many of my fellow West Virginians. The people of West Virginia value funerals… a lot. It is a big deal here. I however do not. While I understand why these rituals are valued, I myself do not value them at all. Well, let me step that back for a second. There is value to me, in that I see that they help people I care about go through the grieving process. That is valuable to me, but me personally, no.

I believe when I die, if my wife and children are still around (I hope), then I don’t want a funeral. I suppose that if the kids need something then that is fine, but honestly, I hope they don’t spend much money on it. If anything is needed to be done, then just have a picture of me up front at the church and have the pastor preach a short sermon. Then maybe people could bring some pot luck so people could eat and share memories of me, that would be great.

I have seen the bills that funerals leave behind. I don’t want to saddle my family with anything like that when I pass on. I don’t need a fancy coffin. I don’t need a new suit to wear. I don’t need formaldehyde in me to preserve me. In fact, I don’t need anything done to the body besides to get rid of it. That’s not me any longer. I am not in there. Who I am is no longer present with that husk. I am somewhere else, with someone else.

I understand that grief is a part of losing someone. I am okay with the grief, but it has nothing to do with my body. I have spent a little time looking into how to donate your body to science, but it seems like it is a more complicated idea than I first thought. It’s not like being an organ donor, where you just check the box and it’s taken care of. There’s a little more to it apparently. I need to spend some more time investigating it. I would rather allow my body to help future doctors learn than to make it all “pretty” so people can gawk at my body and say things like, “He looks so natural.” Yeah, I’m a fan of that.

Death, for me, is not a loss. Sure I don’t want to have it happen any time soon, there’s still a lot left to do on this plane, but neither do I shy away from it. I’m not worried about it. When I was younger, there was certainly some existential dread going on, but I think that was because I felt like there was still so much left to do. Much of those desires have been fulfilled for me. Let’s look at some of those, I got to marry the love of my life, and our life together has been fantastic so far and as much as I can tell, it will be for the future as well. I have three amazing kids who are already turning out fantastic. Now of course there’s a lot left to do with them, but they are here and will continue to be as fantastic as they are now, I have no doubt. I guess in the end, as my Momma said, “Just freeze me and pound me in the ground.”

D. Michl Lowe

The Monster Outside My Window And My Dad

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When I was around five years old, we still lived in the little red house on White Oak Dr., but now the house is white. However, as a child, it was a stark red color with wooden shingles and a leaky basement. When you entered the house and turned to the left, you would go down the only hallway in the home. My room was the last bedroom on the left.

One night, my dad put me to bed and said his customary “love you” and then turned off the light and went to his room. I sat there in the dark and being a little kid, got scared. I can’t tell you beyond just saying that I was scared of a monster, what that monster really was, but it was terrifying enough for me to call my dad back into the room with a loud call of “Dad”! He came back into the room and asked what I wanted.

“Um, I’m scared that there might be a monster outside of my window.” To be fair, my room had two windows and while one of them was a story up over the top of the garage, the one I was scared of was about four feet above the backyard. Dad went over to the window and beckoned me to come over and look out the window. “No…” I said, still slightly scared. “Get over here.” He said. I came over to the window. “Look out that window. Do you see any monsters out there?” He asked. I shook my head no. “That’s because there’s no such thing as monsters and there certainly aren’t any outside of your window. Now go to sleep.” I went back to my bed and dad walked from the room giving me a slightly gruffer version of “I love you; goodnight!”

Several minutes went by while my little boy brain continued to spin tails of monsters clawing their way into my room via the window to the backyard. Finally, I yelled again, “Dad!” … slowly he appeared in my doorway. “What?” It was a question devoid of desire for the actual answer. “I’m afraid a monster is outside my window…” Dad looked defeated. His logical argument had failed to suppress my imagination in the darkness and boredom. “Come here.” He said again. “No…” I said, shrinking back from his gruff utterance.

As scared as I was of the monster outside the window, I was much more scared of dad and the possible solution he was churning away at in his head. “Come. Here.” He said in a deliberate and just slightly menacing way. I slinked from the bed, sliding out from under the covers without even throwing them back. Like a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a dinner place setting without even clinking the glasses.

Dad opened the window. “Stick your head out there and tell me what you see.” I slowly peeked my head out the window. The light was still holding on in the evening. It was summer and there was still mugginess to the West Virginia evening despite a slight tinge of coolness in the air. Thinking of it now, it was an evening that should have created a sense of comfort and home. Of sitting outside on the front porch in the evening with a glass of sweet iced tea and talking with a neighbor.

Instead, for the little boy in that room, the evening was full of possible fear. Fear in spite of the knowledge that my dad was there, protecting me, sheltering me, loving me. “Do you see a monster?” He asked again. I shook my head “no” once more. He closed the window. “Go to bed, I don’t want to hear from you again. If you aren’t bleeding or dying, I don’t want to hear your voice. Got it?” I got it and nodded my head.

I sat alone in my bed once more. It should have been a peaceful aloneness. Darkness that comforts you and wraps you up in the silence and stillness of a night. There’s the knowing that you aren’t alone in a house where your loved ones are safe and sleeping or just being quiet in another room just beyond your door. But this wasn’t my way of being this night. I lay with my head draped over the side of the bed with my face looking up at the dome of the ceiling light. The patchwork of textured ceiling melded together and blurred out as the blood would pool in my brain. The white of the glass globe slowly slides into and melds with the white around it. I sat up again, the blood cascading back into my body. I sat there… crisscross apple sauce on my transformers bed sheets, waiting for sleep that didn’t come.

I honestly believe I made it around fifteen minutes before the fear crept back into my mind. It was long enough for dad to believe his tactic of opening the window had worked and perhaps even time enough for him to go to sleep as well. However, given that I went to bed fairly early in those days, I am assuming dad was not only still awake, but just relaxing in his room with my mom. I debated for some time in my mind whether or not I should risk calling my dad into my room again. For a little boy, this was a very difficult decision. In the end, my imagination won out and I called out again. “Dad!” … It took him some time to get to my room. I could hear him having a discussion with mom in the next room. In the end, I could hear him as his feet pounded down the hall. He was mad…

He came into my room without saying anything and went straight to the window. Opening it, he gestured for me to come over to it. I shook my head “no”. He didn’t open his mouth, but hissed the words through his teeth, “Now…”. I came over.

Dad then proceeded to throw me out the window.

Now it wasn’t a graceful action in any sense of the word. Let’s be clear, I fought tooth and nail to stop him. When the dance of the adult man and wiggly little boy was done, I was clinging to the window sill crying for all I was worth, molten tears creating an emotional river on my cheeks. “No daddy no!” I screamed. He was holding onto my wrists and I tried and failed to climb back in the window. “Look here. Listen to me.” He said, in a calmer voice than he had any right to use after doing what he had done. “I’m going to prove to you that there are no monsters out here.”

My eyes were wide, and I listened very carefully to what my dad said next. For all I knew, my very life depended on following the directions he was about to give. “I’m going to shut the window, and you are going to go over there to the back door and knock on it. I will let you in the house through the back door. That way, if there are any monsters out there, they will have ample time to eat you up before I get to the back door. However, if there aren’t any monsters out there, then you should be fine.”

My eyes were the size of softballs and I glanced towards the back door. In reality, it was maybe fifteen feet away if that, but as a little boy, it seemed as though the back walk was made of lava, and getting there was an impossibility. “No! No, daddy!” He pried my hands from the sill, still holding my wrists. “See you in a sec”, he said. Then he shut the window. I might as well have flown to the back door, grabbing the handle to jerk on it to see if perhaps it was already unlocked; no luck there.

I began pounding on the door. My father, on the other hand, meandered out of my room and stopped in the hall to stretch and yawn. He turned into the kitchen and stopped to check the fridge to see if any of the mac and cheese from dinner was leftover; there wasn’t any. Closing the fridge door, he walked over to the back door and calmly unlocked the deadbolt, and then opened the door.

I slid into the kitchen like a Hall-of-Famer getting home as the pitcher crashes in just behind him. Getting up I went after dad, pounding on his chest and crying hysterically. He was laughing at me, a big smile on his face. “Hey…” he said, in a much too jovial tone. “You’re alive! You made it!” … I looked around the kitchen. I looked up at my dad. “You didn’t get eaten.” He said. I stopped crying and wiped my nose. Walking me back to my room, he got more serious, “Now, go to bed.” He said.

I walked into my room and laid down on my bed. You might say the adrenaline surge had tuckered me out. You might say that the rush had spent all my brainpower so I was able to then sleep. Or, you might say that I was not much more afraid of my dad than imaginary monsters, and all that might be true. Or you might say that my dad had taught me a valuable lesson in trust and reality. I believe the latter. In any case, I slept soundly that night and many more in the future and was no longer afraid of monsters outside my window. 

D. Michl Lowe

The Homicidal Mower: Part 2

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You would think that the story of this mower would be over, but it’s not. A week or so after that incident, dad had fixed the mower’s breaks and I got a call from him. Again, make sure to read his lines with a heavy southern accent.

“Well hello there son! How are ya do’n?”

“Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

“Well, after fixin’ the mower there, I was thinking about it and decided to go on out and get myself a new mower. So I was a wonder’n if you would like to buy my old mower?”

I thought about it. Yes, this mower had nearly killed me, but it was fixed now and I wouldn’t need to take it down that steep hill again because it would stay at my house. So it should be alright, right? I bought the mower. 

Mistakes were made.

That first day that I had the mower I was in the garage and went over to the mower and noticed it was low on gas. So I opened up the hood, twisted off the gas cap, picked up the gas can, filled the tank, and then shut the hood. I started the mower up and got to the mowing process.

If you caught that, you are a step ahead of where I was at the time.

Now, I should mention something about this mower. It was a little old. As such, if the mower was ever shut off without turning the actual key to shut it off (like if you got off the seat the safety switch turned off the engine), it would backfire with a very loud bang. Anyway, I was about halfway through the first lap around the yard, when I found a hole that I didn’t expect. The front tire took a dive into this hole and I took a dive right off the side of the mower and onto the ground. I wasn’t hurt, but of course, the mower shut off using the safety switch under the seat.

As I was getting back up to the mower to make sure it stopped, the engine backfired, and that would be when a pillar of fire went up from the engine ten feet into the air. I would miss that eyebrow on that side. It was my favorite. For that matter, I enjoyed that half of my beard too… and the hair from that side of my head. Smacking my head seemed to put out the flames from that, but then I was faced with a slightly larger issue, the entire mower was not engulfed in flames.

Looking around desperately, I noticed the water hose was on this side of the house. Quickly I ran over to it, it was a good twenty meters from where I was. Upon reaching it, I noticed it wasn’t the kind that cranked, it was one where you had to unloop each loop to get the length of hose you needed, so you couldn’t just pull. I began unlooping the hose! Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip… check distance and amount of hose dispensed… flip, flip… look again, flip. I grabbed the prayer end of the hose and ran towards the mower, which was still burning. I made it three-fourths of the way when I was suddenly jerked to a halt.

Not enough hose!

I ran back to the hose holder again. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Analyzed the distance yet again. Flip, flip. Ran back and grabbed the sprayer end of the hose and made it to the still burning mower. Pointing the nozzle at the mower, I gripped down on the handle to start the flow of the water…

No water!

Again, I ran back to the hose dispenser and turned the little wheel to let the water start to flow. Wonk, wonk, wonk, wonk. Looked out to check the flow of the water, wonk, wonk, wonk. Then I ran back to the mower yet again. Picked up the nozzle and began spraying the water all over the mower. There was a sizzle and hiss as the water doused the flames.

I stood there a moment, soaked, burnt, and exhausted. I felt the side of my head and felt the little balls of burned hair. Luckily, other than the hair, I didn’t seem to be hurt. I called dad and told him what happened, yelling at him that apparently his former mower was possessed and trying to kill me since this was the second time. I was pushing the mower up the hill as I was talking to him, the phone sitting on the wet seat.

After asking me if I was okay, he asked, “Did you put the gas cap back on the gas tank inside the hood? I stopped pushing the mower and cocked my head to the side. Then I opened the hood and looked in. There was the engine and the plastic gas tank just behind it. The cap of the tank sat on top of the engine, not screwed onto the tank. “See!” I yelled, “That proves it! The mower took the gas cap off to attempt to kill me!” I went to screw the cap back onto the gas tank and it didn’t fit anymore. That’s what happens when the threads of the opening look like a painting from Salvador Dali. Placing it on top of the opening I hit it with my fist and it snapped into place. “I wonder if it still runs…” I said to myself. I knew the answer before I even turned the key. A mower doesn’t tend to run with all the wiring for it looks like it came off a taffy puller. Pushing the mower back into the garage, I sighed. Apparently, there were only two realities available to me, either I was foolish enough to leave the cap off, or this mower was possessed and out to get me. Obviously, it was the latter.

D. Michl Lowe

The Homicidal Mower: Part 1

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Alicia and I had recently bought a new house. It was bigger than our first home and actually had a yard. Part of the plan was to have a yard so we could get the girls (and us) a dog. As such, we needed a new mower, since our old push mower wasn’t really going to be up to the job of this new yard, but they were expensive, and I was cheap. So-called up my dad who now lived just down the hill from us.

“Hey, dad! You wouldn’t let me borrow your mower would you?” I said.

Just as a side note, while it’s not true of him, I find it very funny to give him a strong southern accent when I read his words in my head, or when I am telling this story out loud to people.

“Well, sure son. Why don’t cha just come on down here and we can take a look at letting ya get a hold of that thing.” Again, use a deep southern accent, it helps.

I drove down to dad’s house and then went through the typical dad lecture about how to use a riding lawn mower without chopping off your own leg and also breaking the mower at the same time. I would recount it here for you, but I am sure you have heard similar lectures from your own dad or dad-type person in your own life. As such, I was soon driving the mower back up the hill to my new house to get busy with mowing the lawn.

It should be noted, that our new house was on top of a fairly large mountain. The road to get to the house is also fairly steep. A solid forty-five-degree angle leads the road to get to our house. Several neighbors’ houses dot the road on the way up to ours. That’s an important note for later, remember that. Anyway, I got the mower to the house and began to mow the lawn. Everything went great, the grass was mowed and the mower did fine. And then it came time to take the mower back to dad’s house.

I got back on the mower and began driving it across the top of the mountain to get to the section of the road where it started to slope down the hill. As I started down the steep slope, the breaks began to do… odd things. They became very touchy. I would barely push on them and they would jerk the whole mower to a complete stop. So I would let off the brake, coast down the hill, and then suddenly slam to a halt. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. For the first twenty meters or so, this was how it went, and then, suddenly… Snap! The breaks broke.

The mower started speeding up. Faster and faster it began careening down the hill. As it was hitting small imperfections in the blacktop, it felt like I was riding a bucking bull at seventy miles per hour. I kept hitting the breaks, but there was nothing, no response at all. The ride was quickly becoming a dangerous situation. Then an idea sprung into my mind. I noticed my neighbor’s driveway going off to the right and his lawn stretching out flat. At the moment, I thought, “I can just steer the mower over across his driveway and into his yard and the flat grass and friction will slow me down!”

So that was what I attempted to do, I swerved the mower onto his driveway, but there was a problem. What I didn’t see was that the edge of his driveway was sloped up into a ramp. So when I hit the edge of his driveway, it ramped the mower up into a jump! I swear three dogs ran underneath the mower while it was in the air. I landed with a hard crunch in the grass and then another problem became apparent.

I was headed directly for the neighbor’s front door, which was made of etched glass. I remember thinking that the gentle swirling pattern of the glass was going to make for beautiful shards. Trying to turn the wheel was useless, the grass was still wet with dew and I was sliding closer and closer to the door. The mower came to a halt and barely tapped its front bumper on the door. I sat on the mower, my legs upended over the hood, with my arms wrapped tightly over the wheel. I’m sure I looked a sight. Slowly I glanced around, looking to see if any of my neighbors had witnessed me nearly kill myself on the back of a John Deere. No one apparently saw. I quickly put the mower back in gear and coasted the rest of the way down the hill and was able to get the mower back to my dad. His response when hearing the story? “So, what you’re saying is… you broke my mower.”

To be continued…

D. Michl Lowe

Our Trip To Florida And How I Nearly Died

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When I was around seven years old my family decided that it was time for us to take a trip down to Florida and go to Disney and then head over to Daytona Beach. We decided I needed a buddy to take with me, and so Cousin Randy went with us. Because we wanted to save money where we could, we decided to drive down there. On the way down, when you are coming out of Georgia and heading into the northern part of Florida, you are driving on a large highway that is very straight in one section. I remember looking up from my Gameboy and seeing that our side of the highway was empty, with no cars at all. However, on the other side of the highway, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic.

I mentioned this to dad and he thought this was odd as well. So turning on the radio, we discovered that Florida was being evacuated because Hurricane Andrew was going to be hitting Florida very soon. Now I don’t know about your dad, but my dad’s reaction to this news was to comment that he would be able to get some really cool video with his camcorder while we were down there. And so we continued our trek down into the sunshine state. Our first stop was at Disney and our first park was supposed to be The Magic Kingdom. Now, I have been to Disney several times since this first trip and have never had the same experience as we did the first time we went.

Upon entering the park, there is a large boulevard running down the middle of the park with Cinderella’s Castle at the end of the road. The road is lined with shops, restaurants, and little boutiques. Every other time I have been to this park, there have been so many people crowding this area, that you can barely see five feet in front of you and are shoulder to shoulder the entire time. It is always packed. However, this first time we went, there were maybe twenty people on that boulevard. No one was in the part hardly at all.

You might think I am exaggerating, but I am not. Normally, each ride has a good hour-long wait to get on it. We walked directly on every ride we wanted to. No, wait at all. In fact, we rode a couple of the rides twice. By lunchtime, we had ridden every ride we wanted to ride in the Magic Kingdom. We went back to the hotel to eat, then decided to go over to the Animal Kingdom to check it out. By dinner, the time we had experienced everything we wanted to at the Animal Kingdom as well. When I tell you it was the best Disney Vacation we have ever had, it’s not an exaggeration. It only rained once, for about twenty minutes.

After our time at Disney, we went over to Daytona Beach. This is where things get a little more interesting. The storm had begun to really become fierce. There were days we were stuck in the hotel room because of torrential rain. Dad was having a ball filming it all and mom kept asking if we needed to get to the first floor of the hotel since she believed we would be blown away. Dad informed her that if we were lower, we were much more likely to be flooded so it was better to stay on the higher floors. I don’t think that made her feel better.

So on Randy and I’s first trip down to the sand, we decided that playing in the surf was the best idea. However, that idea was quickly dashed when we realized that about every twenty minutes or so, a ten-foot-high wave would come along and crash so hard on us that we thought it would rattle our teeth loose. So we moved a little further out into the water so that it was about up to our waste. For some reason, the waves were not nearly as bad at that depth, but it presented a new problem for us; jellyfish.

Apparently, the storm had blown in a very large school of quarter-sized jellyfish. Their tentacles weren’t but three to four inches long, but they could still sting, and sting they did, a lot! The problem was, it wasn’t a bad sting. Let me explain. With a normal jellyfish sting, it hurts bad enough that a little kid might be done swimming for the day. But these little jellies weren’t terrible, and that was the issue. It wasn’t a bad enough sting to make you get out of the water. I would compare the sting to the bite of a horsefly. So you would yelp, and swat at the water, but then keep on going, with only a little red line to show where they had got you.

At the end of the first day, we came up out of the water and it looked like we had red spider webs all over our legs. That’s how many sting lines we had down our legs. Not that we minded really though, we played that entire day in the ocean. So it wasn’t that bad, but by the next day, we were ready to see if there was another way to have fun. Other than swatting at jellyfish.

The deeper out into the ocean we went, the fewer jellies there seemed to be. So we moved out deeper and deeper, which, thinking about it now was very foolish; considering rip tides and what I am about to tell you about. Either way though, we moved further and further out into the ocean until we were around a football fields length out in the water. It was around ten feet deep at this point. We were diving for shells. Both of us were expert swimmers even at such a young age and had no trouble diving to the bottom to search in the dark for the shells.

We had been out in the water for around ten minutes or so and were treading water. We were facing each other talking, I was facing towards the shore, and Randy facing out to sea. Suddenly, as I was swimming there, a large fin rose up out of the water, just behind Randy. It passed by him and silently slipped back down into the water. I was almost speechless, but managed to sputter out,

“R-R-Randy… th-th-theres a shark!”

His eyes went wide, “Where?”

“Just behind you.”

“Well we gotta get outa here then!” he said.

We started swimming as fast as we could back towards the shore, but we only made it about halfway back, before three more fins rose from the water just in front of us. We stopped dead in our tracks. But should take a moment and explain something to you. In the ocean, there are two main types of fins that you should know about. One of them, is a large triangle, like the one I saw just behind Randy. It was nearly a foot long with crisp edges. The other type of fin though is more like the crest of a wave, where the tip of it curls back. This second type of fin was the type we were seeing now, the three of them begin to circle us.

As you may have guessed, this second type of fin is not a shark fin, but a dolphin fin. The three dolphins were about eight feet from where we now trod water and slowly circled us. We were scared, of course. Dolphins are big animals and these weren’t the trained ones you see in Sea World, but wild dolphins of the Atlantic. However, as we continued to swim towards shore, they kept up with us, circling us the whole way into the breaks where we could stand.

Now, I don’t know how you would have taken that situation, but from that day forward, I have believed that the dolphins were protecting Randy and me from the shark. So that’s the story of how Randy and I went to Florida during Hurricane Andrew and nearly got eaten by a shark, only to be saved by dolphins. True story.

D. Michl Lowe

Why I Write

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Robert Lowe

I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but it had to be some time after I was seven years old because it was in our new house. Dad and I were scrounging around the attic when we came upon a cedar chest. Asking dad about it, he pulled it over and opened it. Inside, were piles of loose cut-out newspaper clippings and old yellow legal pads covered in handwritten stories, observations, notes, and editorials.

My grandfather Robert Lowe, was a prolific writer apparently. The newspaper clippings were all letters to the editor he had written about many issues that were concerning to him. Some of the writing was stuff he had copied down and others were original writings. In this box was a collection that in some ways laid out who my grandfather was. I know dad poured over the writings trying to get an understanding of who his father was since he had died when dad was only 13 years old. There was a sense that reading what he had written allowed an aspect of who he was to survive his death; beyond just pictures and memories.

I remember believing that the chest had great value. I still believe that. As his Grandson, I could find a lot of insight into my family and who I was by reading his work. That being said, much of what he wrote was not directly about him, but about things he cared about. I wanted some more personal writings; something that told me more about who he was, what his life was like, and how that fit into who he was. I wanted to know his thoughts and beliefs about life. I wanted to see who he was as a man. Some of his writings give that, but other times, it just wasn’t personal enough.

So with my writings, I hope to give my own children and future family insight into who I am and was. I want them to see what my life was like. My plan for my writing is to write about myself, my beliefs, and what I hope for my family. I would also like to write stories that capture not just their imagination, but the imagination of others as well. I have a lot of worlds in my head and I would like others to be able to share in my wonder. Maybe I will be able to do that.

This is my hope anyway, that my writing will be just as meaningful to others as my Grandfathers were to me. As to the quality of the writing, that’s in question. My narratives are spotty at best. Good luck.

The Wayward Uncle

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We had taken a trip to the Smokey Mountains with mom and dad. Our idea of fun on these sorts of trips is shopping at the outlet stores, walking around the specialty shops, going to the aquarium, and most of all; eating at the restaurants. Every time we go through, we always eat at the Apple Barn at least one morning. During this trip, Uncle Ron had called mom and asked her if we could meet with him while on our trip since he doesn’t live far from this area.

At first, she balked at the idea, but he pushed her and said, “You all are going to eat at Apple Barn, right? Well, let me pay for your meal and eat with you.” How could she refuse, a free meal, and without a rude excuse, no real reason to say no. So, we met Uncle Ron for breakfast that morning. I had to explain to the girls who this man was, he had never met them after all. “This is Grammy’s ex-husband. They got a divorce when I was a teenager and I haven’t talked to him in years, just be nice and it will be fine” I said.

The girls of course were as loveable and cheerful as they have always been and took to Ron immediately. He was cautious though as if he wasn’t sure of himself around us now. Of course, he still had his laughable and gregarious nature about him, the one that makes people want to be around him, telling stories and laughing that full laugh he always had when I was growing up. But something else was there. A tinge of something quiet just on the edge of his voice. He was nervous around us. As we sat there, I couldn’t tell you anything he said. I was just staring at him; inside I was a fury of emotion. Several times I nearly had to get up and leave the table as I was becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

Breakfast ended and I don’t think I said ten words to the man. We walked out and Alicia was taking some pictures with the girls. Mom and dad were talking with Ron and it became time for him and us to leave. I suddenly felt a pang of need. “I’ll walk you to your car,” I said. We walked through the parking lot until we got to his car. We were standing there… not really saying much and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I burst into tears and grabbed him in a hug. Holding him tight I sobbed uncontrollably, “I miss you, Uncle Ron… I miss you.” We were both crying now. “I don’t want to be angry anymore. I don’t want to be upset anymore. I just want you back,” I said. “I want that too!” He said. “If I can, I want to be your little girl’s grandpa, if I can. I know I’ve missed a lot. I know that. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

We most likely stood there for 15 minutes. I don’t honestly remember what we said to each other, but it was a profound healing moment. A letting go of hurts and pain that had been compounding for years on both sides. I got in the car and discussed what had happened with mom, dad, and Alicia. They were skeptical, not sure if we should allow Ron back into our lives too easily. What would Grammy think about it? She had stayed with us throughout the years, not pushed us away, and had even been at my children’s births up to this point, holding them on their first day of life. I never wanted to do anything that would have hurt her. While I would ultimately call her and have a conversation with her about the experience and what it meant to me and to the future, for a while anyway, I just kept it to myself.

D. Michl Lowe

The Coming Of Nikolai

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Let me talk about the end of 2018. Kyle and Natalie, our music pastor and his wife, came to us and told us that they were pregnant with their third child. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was mid-2018. In my heart of hearts, I can assure you (my reader) that I was done having children. All through college and perhaps even before that, I had always said that I wanted two little girls; no more, no less. And at that moment, I had my two girls and beyond that, Ellie was already seven years old. Having another child wouldn’t make sense at all.

However, when our friend’s words rang in my mind, a spark began to burn inside of me. I couldn’t shake the idea of another child from my mind. It nearly consumed me. God was pulling at me, causing me to question my conviction. At first, I didn’t talk to Alicia about this. How could I? If I told her about it, she would get excited and if these feelings turned out to be nothing, just a passing fancy, then I would have hurt her a great deal. Inside myself though, I knew she wanted more children. She had always said four, but we had compromised on two. She always said no way to three because she didn’t want the third to be left out. Or for there to be a middle child.

I went and spoke with Kyle about my feelings and thoughts. His immediate response was, “You need to have another kid!” Now I know he must have been a little biased since he and his wife had made a very similar decision. I spoke to him about my hesitations. About all the reasons why it was a crazy idea, why we shouldn’t do it. And then I said that despite all that, I was still convicted about it. I didn’t know why. He told me that he had similar feelings before they had made their decisions and that he had come to have peace about it through prayer. He told me I needed to be in prayer and that I should seek Christ’s will. While I appreciated his enthusiasm and advice, I was still unsure.

I went home and spoke to Alicia about it. I came out of our closet just before bed and said, “What would you think about us having another kid?” She stopped. “Are you being serious?” she asked. “Now, you can’t just bring this up with me, if you are serious you need to let me know. Because I had a peace about us not having any more kids, even though it’s something I have really wanted. You can’t just throw this out there you know.”

I paused in the doorway, considering why I had even mentioned it without having come to a solid conclusion just yet. “I haven’t come to a consensus yet on how I feel, or what God is telling me about it. I don’t have peace, but I felt like I needed to tell you what was on my heart. What do you think about that?” I can’t be sure, but I remember her beginning to cry. “I have a peace about it, I say let’s do it!” I regaled her with all my logical reasons as to why I thought it was a bad idea, and still she held firm. When I spoke to my mom and dad about it later, they held to my beliefs about the bad idea of having another kid. It would be too hard, too expensive, and just overall not a good idea. I didn’t have peace about it. I wasn’t sure.

During this time, I was working up in the sound booth for our local church. I can’t tell you what the sermon was about. I can’t tell you what really was even going on in my own mind at that moment. However, while working the sound for our Facebook live feed, Pastor began to speak and my heart suddenly lurched. All I can recall is that for a moment in time, Pastor was no longer speaking to the congregation, God was speaking through him to me.

All my fear was gone. All my reservations were gone. The logical reasoning, I had built up in my mind seemed like foolishness. God had a plan. I didn’t know what it was, but He had one. I needed to trust in His ability to see us through the challenges. Which is interesting. Nikolai was born on August 31, 2019. It was a mostly uneventful birth, but just a day after he was born, he had to be taken to the NICU because he had an infection in his blood. He was there for about a week until he was strong enough to come home with us. It wouldn’t be the last time one of my kids had an extended stay in a hospital.

Looking back at this time now, after Niko was born, Alicia was able to take off enough time from work so that she could get all the way from the beginning of school in August to Christmas break staying at home with him, fantastic. But God took us a step further. One month after Christmas break, the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 hit and we worked from home for the most part until that Summer, giving Alicia just about a full year of staying at home with Niko.

Even when we did have to go back to work (sorta) in the next school year of 2020 in September of that year, Niko was able to only go to daycare part-time, Mom and Dad kept him two days a week, saving us money and allowing him to spend a lot of time with family. God has a way of working these things out. In ways, we will never understand and will often never see until a long time later.

Now, I continue to look at my son (he’s two and a half now) and Kyle’s little girl and I think about these kids. Who they are becoming and who they are right now. The world is a better place with them in it. A friend of mine recently went through a similar situation as I did and I got to hold his little girl (just a couple months old now) in my arms. We were at dinner with them the other night and I looked over at my son and then down at this little girl in my arms. What a blessing children are. I feel like the meaning of life and love and laughter are brought into clarity through these kids. They will grow up in our church, they will be loved by everyone in it, and they will be loved by us. There will be difficulty, pain, heartache, and tears, and it will all be worth it. All the difficulty that comes with having kids and raising kids will be worth it.

D. Michl Lowe

A Mother’s Discipline

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At one point, I don’t remember my age, I had done something wrong and needed to be punished. My mother sat me down looking out a set of windows that faced the backyard. “You sit here until I come to let you up!” She said. I pretended I didn’t care, that the punishment was no big deal. She then went over to the telephone on the wall and called down to the neighbor’s house just below us. These neighbors had three little girls and a little boy. The middle little girl was Ashley, mentioned above. “Hey Chris, would you send your kids up here to play in Michl’s treehouse for a few minutes? Thanks!” and then hung up the phone. I didn’t hear this conversation.

What I saw next was the point of the exercise. All my best friends suddenly appeared and began playing in my backyard. “Hey, mom!” I yelled. “The girls are here; I’m going to go out and play with them!” I was very excited. Mom came into the room. “Oh, I’m sorry, but little boys who don’t listen to their mommies don’t get to go play with their friends. So, no. You are not going out to play with them.” Big tears welled up in my eyes and began running down my cheeks as I suddenly understood the reason, I was facing the backyard. The kids were only playing back there for maybe five minutes at the most, but it was enough to get my attention as a little kid, four or five years old. “Now, if you decide that you are going to listen to mommy for the rest of the day, then maybe tomorrow we will invite the kids up to play with you and then order some pizza for lunch as well. Does that sound like a deal?” It did. Like I said, I don’t remember what I had done, but to this day, that lesson has stuck with me. Take away what is most important to a child and be willing to give it back with a bonus… good parenting advice.

Speaking of eating pizza, it shouldn’t be understated that getting pizza was a big deal when I was a kid. We didn’t have a lot of money because mom and dad were shoving all their extra money into savings to be able to afford to build a house later. Once, Chris Bloss and Mom took all of us kids to McDonald’s so that we could play on the playground there. You weren’t allowed to play on the playground unless you bought something, so Chris and Mom bought a Diet Coke to split. All of us kids had Fox Kids Club Cards. A card you could get from the local radio station that would get you all kinds of cool stuff as a kid, but mainly for us, would get us a free small fry from the Mcdonald’s. So, we brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, got our free fries, and then all ordered water, also free and since a diet coke was bought, were allowed to play in the play place.

Looking back at that, it was a little sad, but we didn’t care. We got to play on the playground and had some of the best fries around. Once, when the Bloss’ dad Tom got a bonus at work, Chris decided to buy all of us kids a Slurpee from the Kmart. Back then the only flavor was cherry. She handed them out to us kids and each time she gave one to a kid that kid would say, “Thank you!” and then she would move on to the next kid. Not me though, she handed me that thing and I immediately began downing it. I only made it several slurps in when it was suddenly snatched from my hands. “Next time, you will remember to say thank you.” My mother said. I cried, but you better believe the next time something came along like that, I was the first to say thank you. Manners were important. To this day, I still have a habit of saying, “Yes sir and no sir”, which has fared me well.

D. Michl Lowe

The Demon In The Hall

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One night, I was sitting up in my bed, quietly just waiting to get sleepy. My bed was on the opposite wall from the door to the hallway. As a sat there, I saw a figure of a man walk past my doorway towards the bathroom. It was dark (I didn’t have a night light) and it was only a silhouette that I saw, the color of the back of your eyelids when you close your eyes, a swirling mix of colors that ultimately would be called black. I assumed it was dad going to the restroom, but as I sat there waiting for the light of the bathroom to come on as he used it, that didn’t happen. Instead, the figure came back and stared into my room. It then came into my room and moved silently over to my bed and stood over me.

This was not my father. This was a figure that was made of darkness, the blank face looked down at me and then turned and silently strode from the room. As soon as it passed beyond the threshold of my door, I bolted from the bed, screaming, running towards my parent’s room. When I should have run into the back of that thing, I ran into the front of my dad who had heard me scream, and came running from his room. I was comforted and put back into bed. What did I see that night? I’m not sure. A demon, maybe? This will be a question I get answered when I finally arrive in heaven someday.

D. Michl Lowe

The Floating Lights

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One night, my mom and dad went down across from the Bloss’ house to their grandfather’s house, Don Bloss. This was Tom Bloss’ father, Tom being the girl’s dad. They were buying some property from him to start the process of building a house. They wanted to build a house of their own design. My cousins; Randy, Tammy, Tuesday, and I were hanging out together. This had to have been around Christmas time because Tammy lived in Texas and I was only able to see her around that time of the year. As it happens, there was a blacktop road beside the girl’s house that went up the hill near there and had a circle turnaround at the top. Don had paved this to encourage people to buy lots up there.

As mom and dad were negotiating and signing contracts, my cousins and I decided to walk up to the top of the hill and play tag at the top. It was becoming dusk by the time we got to the top of the hill. It was cloudy. There was a large tree just beyond the pavement, which sat in a small field just before the edge of the forest which continued up the hill. I knew just inside the tree line was a barbwire fence. The land Don had broken up into lots, used to be his family’s farm where they had cows. As we played, I noticed some lights at the top of the hill just inside the tree line. I didn’t think much of it. There were a lot of kids around this area that rode four-wheelers down the trails here inside the barbed wire fence. So, I just assumed it was some kids up there riding four-wheelers.

There was a problem with this theory, however. There was no sound of engines. Randy suddenly stopped running having seen me standing over to the side staring up the hill. “What are those lights?” He asked. “I’m not sure.” I honestly answered. “I thought maybe they were four-wheelers, but I don’t think so, there’s no engine sound.” The girls stopped playing as well and came to stand next to us, hearing the conversation. “Maybe it’s some people riding bikes with lights on the handlebars?” asked Tammy. That could have been the case, but those were not cheap and often broke easily. So, seeing so many (five in fact) on bikes would have been rare at this time. As we debated, the lights began to move down the hill, just inside the tree line, down the trail I knew was there.

“I don’t hear any leaves,” I said. Referring to the fact that the foliage was down and we should have been hearing the crunch of leaves as bikes or even feet were coming down the path, but it was completely silent. No sound at all, save for a slight breeze. These lights were round and appeared to be hanging in the air. They were about the size of basketballs and moved slowly down the path, about as fast as some running at a slow jog.

As the lights came closer to our group, they left the woods and began floating across the small field between the blacktop circle beneath the tree that was there. It was at this point that we realized that nothing was holding up these lights, not a bike, a person, or anything else. The balls of light were gently glowing with a yellow-ish orange light and they were floating about three feet above the ground seemingly on their own. As children, we were terrified and immediately began running down the hill. The lights, followed us, close behind. Looking back, I could see they were matching our pace as we ran, being only about twenty feet behind us. We ran all the way down the hill and then up the driveway to where my parents were meeting in the house just above the end of that road. We stopped long enough to look back down at the end of the road we just come from. The lights were at the end of the road. As we watched, they began swirling around each other and then just winked out, as if someone had blown out their candles.

Of course, we told my parents what had happened, but we weren’t believed. My dad just thought we had gotten scared in the dark and whipped ourselves up into a frenzy. However, I can tell you that when I was around 14 years old, I was watching the Discovery Channel with dad when suddenly on the screen were my floating lights. I jumped up and just about scared the pants off of dad. “That’s the lights we saw when I was a kid!” I yelled. Dad was completely confused and I had to tell him again about the lights. So, what did the Discovery show say about the lights? Aliens? Ghosts? Nope! Apparently, it’s a natural phenomenon called “ball lightning”. It’s where lightning forms into a sphere because of magnetism or something. It often floats several feet off the ground or way up in the air. Now the way it seemed to chase us? I’m not sure about that, but I am convinced that we saw ball lightning that night. I guess when I get to heaven this is yet another thing, I am going to have to ask God about.

D. Michl Lowe

The Ninja Kitty And The Trailer

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Around the time I was seven years old, my mom and dad decided that we should move to a new house. They had purchased the land from Don Bloss and we would be moving to the other side of the Bloss girl’s house onto the land they had bought. However, the house had to actually be built. So, they started to build, but also put our little red house up for sale at the same time. As it happened, someone bought our house before the new house was done being built.

We were in the middle of the build for the new house and now had no house to live in while it was being finished. What could we do? Mom spoke with a friend of ours who agreed to allow us to rent a trailer down the road from Sissonville Elementary. It was a very small trailer! In fact, it was only two bedrooms and one of those bedrooms was packed floor to ceiling with our moving boxes. As it was, my bed was placed in a small walk-in closet.

When we first arrived at the trailer, we brought Samson (my dog) and BT, our kitty cat. I remember we got them down out of the car and Samson immediately began running around the small yard peeing on everything and BT ran off into the woods. We were a little concerned about BT, but she was an inside/outside cat, so she could take care of herself. Leaving her some food and water out on the porch, we waited to see if she would come back. When we woke up the next day, the food the water was gone, but there was still no sign of BT.

We left out another round of food and water and left for school and work. When we pulled up to the house from our day, we saw BT on the porch drinking some of the water we had left. However, the moment we got out of the car, she ran off again into the woods. This continued for a couple weeks. One day though, we got out of the car and the food and water were untouched; we didn’t see BT. We continued to leave fresh food and water, but each day that we came home, it was untouched.

This might sound like a really horrible situation, and it was, but in my seven-year-old brain, I created a scenario that made it easier to deal with. In my mind, I forced myself to believe that BT had decided to live out the remainder of her days in the woods hunting squirrels for her food as a Ninja Kitty. I often would imagine her hopping from limb to limb chasing down the squirrels; oddly enough, she was also wearing a Ninja Turtle Style mask on her head in these imaginings as well. We never saw BT again.

Sometime after that, we started to notice a smell coming from inside the trailer. It started off not that bad, just a mild sickly-sweet odor, but then it started to get worse. It became so bad that when we would open the door to go inside, we would have to turn back around and nearly punk off the porch. It was really bad! Dad decided that he would put on his overalls and crawl up under the trailer to see what was going on. When we got under there, he found a large hole in the flooring panels under the trailer, it looked like something had chewed the hole open.

Upon sticking his arm up into the hold, he felt something large and furry that wasn’t moving. Immediately, he thought “oh, no. BT has crawled up in this hole and died. Michl is going to be crushed.” But it wasn’t BT. When dad crawled back from under the trailer, he pulled out a river rat that was as large as BT from there. All told, it was nearly three feet long including the tail. We found out later that our neighbor had been putting out poison for the rats from the river just beyond his house and the poison was meant to make the rats want to drink a lot of water. So, they were supposed to go back to the river and die down there, but for some reason, this particular rat decided to come under our house to die.

Looking back on this time now, I am wondering if perhaps BT got into the poison, he had put out and that’s what really happened to her. I guess that’s a much more realistic explanation for what happened to her, but honestly, I like the seven-year-old explanation better. Sometimes, we encounter situations in young lives where it’s easier to believe the make-believe rather than the somewhat harsh reality of life. As a kid, I think my mind preferred to live within that fantasy instead of actually facing the death of a beloved pet.

We were in the trailer for nearly a year. Most of my memories there were of riding my bike along the flat blacktop road that led up to the house. I mentioned it was a small place and we were there during the Christmas holiday. There wasn’t enough room for an actual Christmas tree, so we settled on a little Charley Brown Christmas Tree that was set on top of our kitchen table. There was only one gift that I remember that year and it was a red microscope, complete with little slides that had sections of bugs, leaves, and other little things to see close up. For all the scrimping and saving our family was doing at the time, this was one of the best Christmas’ I can remember.

D. Michl Lowe

The Snakes

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When I would go to my Aunt Sherry’s house to spend time with my cousin Randy, we would often make the trek down the road to the local swimming hole. The Little Kanawha River and Little Spring Creek came together in a “T” about a mile down the road from his house. It was here, just beyond the bridge of Little Spring Creek that we had a small sandy beach that resided below the limbs of several trees. It was shady, cool, and slightly deep compared to much of the river. Water that reached our shoulders wasn’t common in the Little Kanawha River around where we were familiar.

So, we would head down there and wade out into the middle of the water, playing as children often do. However, each time we ventured down to that area, there was always a constant, up in the branches of a beech tree, there was a family of black snakes. The beech tree was very large, larger around than I could reach my arms, even today. It was also hollow. On top of the tree, it had been hit by lightning, so it was sheared off at a completely horizontal angle, creating a flat area at the top of the tree where the snakes curled up with each other.

As we swam below, we could look up and see the coils of the snakes drooping down over the edges of the flat area. One of them in particular was extremely large. As a kid, I remember him being at least ten feet long. However, in talking with Randy recently, he states the largest was more like six feet, but I will swear till the day I die that it was at least ten feet long and ten inches around the waist.

The interesting thing about these snakes is that we didn’t mind they were there at all. For one, they never bothered us at all. They stayed in their tree. For another, we understood that black snakes killed and ate poisonous snakes like Copper Heads and Rattlers. They also ate river rats. We knew we didn’t have to worry about those issues at our swimming hole. You might wonder how we knew how big they were if they were always in the tree.

If we sat on the sandbank long enough and quiet enough, eventually the snakes would get hot up in the tree. So, if we were fishing down there on the bank, or just hanging around, sometimes we would see a snake drop down out of the tree and splash into the water. It would bob to the surface and wind its way through the water to the base of the tree and slither up the hollow to get back to the top where it would curl up again. We could see how long they were as they swept through the water. I remember ten feet; Randy, not so much. He says six or seven.

D. Michl Lowe

The Boat

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Time spent at Aunt Sherry’s house was cathartic in a lot of ways. Thinking back on that time there was a lot of downtimes; time spent just lazing the days away. However, there were also times when Randy and I would come up with some crazy idea and start something that would be special in some way. Ideas that in retrospect were stories from childhood that would stick with my mind and grow into tales of meaning and adventure.

There was an old barn across the road from Randy’s house. It was falling apart. The walls were leaning at an odd angle and walking into it, you always had to watch your feet for fear that there might be a copperhead lurking under each board. Truthfully, there most likely was, but when we entered that place, it was with a purpose. Usually, it was to get boards. The rusty nails didn’t offer much resistance to our yanks as we would cart tons of this stuff over to the river and up into a tree to make our treehouse. One summer I came back to Aunt Sherry’s only to find that Randy had built an elaborate spire of platforms and walls, and even trap doors into the tree.

At one point we were “fishing” for catfish one night and decided that building a fire on the wooden floor of one of the platforms was a great idea. Twenty minutes into the fire and the fire itself suddenly disappeared in a bright flash. Having burned a hole through the floor, the entire campfire fell right through it and landed on the ground twelve feet below in a spectacular explosion of sparks. We howled in laughter.

One time, we were hunting through the old barn and came across a large tractor tire insert. It was the large rubber part that would go inside the hard ribbed rubber outsole of the tire. Upon examining it, it was clear that if we blew air into this tire, it would expand and become a huge innertube. At first, we were thinking about how neat it would be to go down the river with this large innertube, but as we talked about it, an idea wormed its way into my mind. What if we strapped boards to the top of this and made it into a boat?

So that’s what we did. Taking rope we lashed a platform of boards to the top of the innertube and created a fine boat. We went into the woods and cut down some small trees and removed the limbs to make some twelve-foot-long poles to act as quant poles used to push us through the water instead of paddles. My Uncle helped us to load the boat into the back of his truck and then drove several miles up the river. After unloading the boat into the water, we set sail down the river back towards Randy Allen’s house.

Several times during the journey, we got stuck on sand bars or other obstacles, but we managed to get ourselves free and continue on. After what I remember to be a long time, like nearly an hour, we arrived at the section of the river behind Randy’s house. Since things had gone so well, we decided to continue going. We continued sailing down the river until we got to the old swimming hole where the snakes hung from the giant beach tree. We continued on. However, it was just after this point those things got a little hairy. With the addition of the creek water entering the river at the swimming hole, the river itself got much swifter, deeper, and wider.

It was becoming much more difficult and often impossible for us to steer, slow, and especially to stop our boat. In the end, after trying for some time to get the boat over the side of the river so that we might walk home and have Uncle Randy come to retrieve our boat with his truck, we were unable to stop it. We abandoned our boat, which continued to sail down the river without us. I like to think that somewhere down there it made it out to the ocean and saved some shipwrecked sailors.

D. Michl Lowe

The Bear

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When I was a young boy, I spent some time at my Aunt Sherry’s house around ten or twelve. My parents would send me there when I was driving them bananas. There were several times that I went to her house which was always fun for me because my cousin Randy was there. He was several years older than me, but we played well together. Her house was a small one-story place with a large kitchen in the front and a little living room set in the back.

In front of the house was a large mountain and their house was set in the middle of a small field with a river that ran behind that.

One day, we had been playing down in the river below the house trying to catch craw-dads. Coming out of the water onto the sand bar, we saw large tracks. Having studied Boy Scout books (even though neither of us were a part of the Boy Scouts), we knew these tracks were bear tracks. They were very large! We followed the tracks up into the field behind the house and moved up the yard following the tracks in the wet grass.

Yet, upon coming to the paved road we lost the trail. Seeing bear tracks of course made us excited, but also a little frightened. Black bears in these parts were no joke. We had heard stories of hunters who had shot bears with an arrow only to have the bear continue to charge them and kill them when the arrow had not done enough damage.

Several days later, we were coming back from our swimming hole when we decided that we needed a snack. While ideas like this were not common, we decided to not go home to get a snack but to head up onto the mountain to get some blackberries. Randy knew of an area on the side of the mountain called the Blackberry Maze where there were many bushes of blackberries. There were so many in fact that the paths between the bushes made a large maze on the side of the mountain, thus the name.

So off we trudged into the mountains. It wasn’t a difficult climb, but the closer we got to the maze, the thicker the brush became. Coming out into the maze, the bushes were taller than me and the winding paths were close nit. They hadn’t been created by people, but by the animals who frequented the area. Off we went sampling the fresh berries. Picking and eating the berries was fun and made you feel like you were a part of the land. We were natives in a natural world living off of nature—freedom in the truest sense of the word.

That’s when we heard it; a snorting sound coming from the edge of the maze, outside of it, and inside the dense brush of the forest. Both Randy and I stopped. Turning we looked at each other.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Yes,” Randy replied, whispering.

“Is that what a bear sounds like?” I asked. “Um, I’m not sure,” Randy said.

We heard that distant snorting again, and this time the brush on the side of the maze began rustling and swaying. Something significant was coming this way. Something that made our skin crawl and our imaginations light up.

“We need to get out of here,” I whispered and Randy nodded his head. He led the way out of the maze and once he got to the edge of the area, he jumped up and swung himself into a tree. I followed and soon we were both sitting in the highest branches of a tree off to the side of the Blackberry Maze.

“Can’t black bears climb trees?” I asked, upon settling myself into the crook of a limb. Randy looked over at me, “Yeah” he said. We both began hopping from limb to limb down the tree as fast as we could, but upon coming to the bottom of the tree once more, the noise from the side of the maze came again louder this time. We both froze.

Then, out from the brush at the side of the maze, stepped the largest example of this creature I have ever seen. A buck stepped into the area of the maze. Not a bear, a buck. A deer with antlers as wide as a car bumper stepped through the brush. He snorted and bounded over to our tree. Now in the years since this happened, I have been told this is not normal deer behavior, but I can attest this is true nonetheless. That deer came directly below our tree and scraped his antlers on the bark. He then proceeded to stamp his hooves and circle the tree for the next hour, not letting either of us come down.

I can only guess as to his motivations, but my assumption is that he had himself a girlfriend somewhere nearby and our presence was disrupting his ability to give her attention in a “baby-making” sort of way, but this is only an assumption. Maybe he didn’t like us eating his berries. Either way, after that hour he seemed to lose interest and wandered off. We were able to come down and head home. That’s the story of how I thought we were being chased by a bear, that turned out to be a deer.

D. Michl Lowe

My Grandfather Was A Coward

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My mother knew nothing about her real father. Even when her mother was brutally murdered by another man, she knew nothing about her real dad; believing her father to be a different man. When her real father revealed himself in her fifties, she was taken aback. A mutual friend apparently was having breakfast with her “dad” down at the local Hardy’s every Tuesday. When she confronted this man who she was told was her “real dad” she was understandably hurt and angry. She asked him, “When my mother was murdered, why didn’t you come to get me? I had no one!” He hung his head, “I was just a poor boxer.” He said, “I didn’t have nothin to offer.”

So why did he contact her then? After all these years, why did he have his breakfast friend reach out to her? Why now? As far as she could tell, it was so he could have a dance partner down at the local Moose Lodge. He was in his late eighties and a little senile, barely able to really comprehend who his relations were. I (her son) went to meet him for the first time and spoke to him about my wife and my kids. “These are your Great Granddaughters”, I told him, showing him a picture of the girls. He smiled and said they looked nice. He didn’t ask anything about me, my wife, or what his great-grandkids liked, or what type of kids they were. Really, there was no discussion about us at all. He either didn’t care or didn’t understand what was really going on.

His days were spent in meaningless pursuits that at his age seemed silly. After a year of knowing about him, all my mother had been a couple of one-sided visits and several uncomfortable phone calls asking her to come dance with him at the Moose Lodge.

Then, he got sick. Sick to the point that it was clear he was going to die. he didn’t ask for any of us. Mom went first to visit him and came away numb. She said, “You don’t have to go.” I went.

I went by myself. I entered the room and saw him lying on the bed, haggard. I ignored the three other people in the room; a friend, his current wife, and his son from another marriage (he never actually married my grandmother). He was unable to speak. Staring at the ceiling he just watched, as if he was expecting something to happen. I stood by the bed and held his hand for some time.

If I am being honest, I hated this so-called man, right or wrong I did. I hated that he wasn’t up to the task of being the father he was called to be. I hated it that he hadn’t stepped up! That he hadn’t ridden in on a white horse and rescued my mom from a childhood of horrors. I hated that in some part, I could see his failures in parts of myself that I abhor. With his hand still in mine, I struggled with what to say. Do you really talk about dying to a person who is facing it? It seemed almost cruel to talk about the encroaching line of eternity that I assumed he was more than aware of.

The pause I took seemed to last for a long time. In the end, I made a decision.

It was a decision that I didn’t care if he wanted to know me or my family. I didn’t care if he was a horrible person who had abandoned his child for the sake of convenience. I didn’t care about any of that. I wanted him to know us. We were worth knowing. However, he would never have the opportunity to do this during his lifetime. His life was over.

I gently squeezed his hand and began to pray over him out loud. “Dear God, my Grandfather doesn’t know you Lord, but I do. I ask you now to open his eyes dear God to Your truth. Help him Lord to ask for Your forgiveness and to believe that you save him even now. So that he might be with you in paradise God…”

After leading him through the sinner’s prayer, I ended it. He couldn’t speak of course. He couldn’t even write or even really smile. I have no idea if he accepted Christ, ignored me, or was even coherent enough to understand what was going on. I kissed his forehead and walked out of the hospital room. I sat in the car beside my wife and wept. I wept for his wasted life, what he had missed. All the amazing relationships and love he had missed out on. He had missed it all.

He was so focused on himself that he had missed the awesomeness God had placed right in front of him. Dear God, help me never miss the goodness you have given to me. Help me not to embrace the cowardice in my blood. Help me to grab life by the throat and wring out every good thing you so generously provide. Help me not to be afraid of living life for You, of being the father you have called me to be.

D. Michl Lowe