2001-01-30 - 18:33 MST

January 30, 2001

Comparison

During World War Two I worked as a clerk on the switch desk at a railroad freight house. What I am thinking about now is the mass of government directives we would be given every day, supposedly the skinny on how a railroad should be run. Most of it would be put in a temporary File Thirteen, so that if hard pressed we could dig up the paperwork. But in the round file it went as it was for the most part the damndest bunch of conflicting, ridiculous blather that really deserved the little attention it got.

Occasionally our station agent or the uptown guys would draw our attention to specific instructions and procedures to be rigidly followed. Some of which we already had been doing all along. Once in a while the manner of handling traffic would be changed a bit.

For the most part all of us on all roads concentrated on moving needed stuff from point A to Point B from railroad to railroad as safely and quickly as could be accomplished. We did not have time every day to sit down and read for two hours before we did six hours of productive work.

The waybills were precious and kept safely going from railroad to railroad as their cars moved, real records were kept, needed records. The government pubs furnished us with a lot of background noise. Some one would come up with a G paper in his hand and would read verbatim a sentence or paragraph from it, which was obscenely an obvious impossiblity for any organization to follow. Then the background noise came to the forefront and the whole freight house would get giggly over the current stupidity.

So here is this little pipsqueak of a Bastion writing a diary or as one person said a journiary. Why ? Well, I am waiting to see the input to Al Scroeder's forum asking about the ditziest journal any of us had seen. Back to Bastion again, keep your eyes to the front man ! Where to start, as a kid I was always a talker and would join into any conversation that would be going at the time. Jeepers was I a drag on adult conversation, not because they were trading dirty jokes, but at my age too much time was spent by the grown ups explaining the facts in a way I could understand things.

My efforts at a written diary were feeble, I saved pennies and bought one of those little leatherette covered books that had a strap firmly attached to the back that had a metal dololly on the other end which would fit into a lock on the cover. It had two keys, one I would carry on my key chain and the other in the back bottom of my dresser drawer. After a spell of not really having anything to say because I was too busy living life and didn't have time to sit and cogitate over a day's entry. Finally realizing that even if I forced myself to sit down and write, this dude here really didn't have anything worth spending time to write about in a book.

I loved the essays we were set to write and the "What I did during summer vacation," bits. In high school I had a blast in the public speaking class. By then I had a little to say and had skill enough in our language to put my ideas across, at least to the point that a teacher could see the wrong limb from which I was swinging.

In my work life much of my time was spent on the telephone honing my sense of the ridiculous at times and a source of fun to me.

I became an amateur radio operator, and enjoyed using the Morse Code to communicate, I never could afford a phone rig. My license expired while I was on my first overseas trip and the chance of studying up to pass the test was nonexistent -- too many kids, too little money kept me doing part time and full time jobs.

As I grew older, once in a while someone would say, "You ought to write a story, or a book." But I just didn't have access to a typewriter. And to think about writing anything in the future, I felt that by the time I could have a typewriter or the use of one I would have forgotten what I had intended to write about.

Work years, sometimes a steady job plus a part time job. By the time I would get home, eating, reading and resting was about my speed.

Fast forward to retirement, a voracious consumption of books, walks and boredom. Needless to say that when my dear wife Heather presented me with a Webtv set and we had a spare tv, the hookup and beginners use of it was super exciting. I spent a lot of extraneous time exploring and surfing.

What inspired me to write a diary was finding out that I had opinions and had something I wanted to say, so I began posting on different forums. Man, here was this old whipper pooper posting to forums and hugely enjoying it and also enjoying seeing the different ways people thought about any given subject.

I began to realize I had things I wanted to say from particular points of view and needed a platform. Of course Diaryland and Webtv, what a pair. Webbing for this dummy and the easiest diary in the world to get into and write. The desire to know myself better also had a great deal to do with act of me writing a diary. This I think has been productive for me too.

I will be eighty in a month or two, can't smell worth a hoot, even after cataract surgery my eyes show their age but still work a bit, one ear doesn't work and the other one keeps me saying, "Huh, what did he say ? ? ? ?" even with a hearing aid. The physical limitation of a super bad back and a tired heart preclude any strenuous activity.

I feel that in diarying and posting in forums as well as exchanging e-mails with other people I am in my element. I can say in my diary what I want to say, and others can read it if they have a mind to, or not. What I write tonight can be read tomorrow or next week, including my e-mails.

There is no one saying, "What did he write ?" because it is in front of their eyes to see.

I want to have a voice, even if I am the only one listening.

Having a diary or not shows me that there is no Comparison . . . . . .

Blog