Dear Wiley: Summer's still hot, Cubs are still cold

From Sunday's TIMES and NEWS-STAR

I stop by the same cemetery spot on the way to church early most Sundays, hang around a bit and wonder what we’d be up to if Wiley Hilburn were enjoying another hot summer in the north Louisiana sunshine.

Wednesday marks six months since the passing of Wiley, who became a companion, either in person or through his writing, to many of you in his 75 often-trying-but-always-intriguing fun and friendly years. He was the longtime poet of North Louisiana, a favorite son of Ruston, a professor, a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor, and a diehard Chicago Cubs fan.

The headstone will be ready soon. Meanwhile, it looks a lot like any other six-month-old gravesite. But no grave is like that of any other when you love the deceased. So while Wiley remains Everyman, which is how he liked it and how he wrote, he left an immeasurable void for many of us who he treated with such care and kindness. So just in case you were wondering -- after missing him in the newspaper this short time -- Wiley surely lives on in our conversations around Ruston, as if he were absent but sure to show up at any moment to comment on current politics, to praise a new biography he’d read or cheeseburger he’d eaten, or drop his head to his chest over the news of the Cubs’ recent trade of their best pitcher.

Some things never change. We miss Wiley, and Chicago has a stranglehold on last place in the National League Central. Truths eternal.

I remind you here, in Wiley’s absence, that the Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908. They won 99 games in the regular season that year. Ninety-nine! In one year! The Cubs! By contrast, they have lost more than 90 in each of the past three seasons, including 101 in 2012.

In both 1907 and 1908, Wiley’s Cubs won back-to-back world championships -- Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, Tinker to Evers to Chance, that bunch. Both times they defeated the Detroit Tigers and a young Ty Cobb, who passed away in old age more than 50 years ago, in 1961. When the Cubs last won the World Series, Roosevelt was president: Teddy. FDR and two World Wars had not happened yet. The Cubs, in other words, are hard at work on their second consecutive century of being baseball’s answer to outer space’s black hole. Wrigley Field is not where world championships go to die; it’s where world championships have never existed.

  

Wiley could not have pulled for a more faithful, easy-to-figure organization. As of this writing, the Cubs are 11 games below .500, 12 games out of first place in the division, and seven games out of FOURTH. That means they are seven games worse, at present, than the fourth-best team in one division of one league.

The cliché is to say, “Boy, I’m glad Wiley’s not alive to see this.” But that would be a lie. He’s seen it all before anyway. And what a joy it was to listen to him talk about the pathetic doings up on Chicago’s North Side!, to witness the head shakes and the eye rolls, the limp neck as his head fell back, his face imploring the heavens for help. The exasperation in the sighs and half sentences, and the exclamation points that dotted the air.

It was a beautiful thing.

But never did the often absent-minded Wiley stop believing, or rooting, or wearing his Cubs cap. One thing Wiley left us with was the will to soldier on when things don’t go your way, as they often won’t. He was true to his team, through thin and thinner.

He didn’t want a long funeral, and it wasn’t. So I didn’t say this then, though I thought it, and still do: Since that day six months ago, I’ve carried with me the comforting mental picture of Wiley walking around in heaven, of him wondering who the Cubs play today, and of him wondering where he parked his car.

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Ask the Paperboy, Chapter 46: ‘World Cup Edition’

From today's TIMES and NEWS-STAR

(Paperboy has been on extended leave getting a dangling participle repaired. He returns today, eager to answer a few in a backlog of queries…)

Dear Ask the Paperboy,

How do you feel about soccer and the World Cup? Please try to type the answer without using your hands.

Bobby in Blanchard

Dear Bobby,

;ld9;a.,meo*%…Wait…no hands didn’t work so well. Don’t know how those soccer dudes do it. I tried typing with my chest; that didn’t cut it either. Maybe I’m not giving these people their due.

The best line I’ve ever heard about soccer being un-American and not for heavy consumption was from a friend who said that no one wants to bet on a sport where you can’t fall on a loose ball.

While I don’t have anything against soccer, I can make my point best by sharing a tiny bit of a long list I continue to compile of “Ways I Will Not Die”:

No. 3 on the list is “Choking on a Brussels Sprout.”

No. 2 is “In Any Kind of Hot Air Balloon Mishap (Unless One Falls on Me).”

And No. 1 is and always will be “In A Soccer Riot.” That is what my friend Bummer wants on his tombstone: “Dead, But Not From A Soccer Riot. See? He Wasn’t ALL Bad!”

If you see Bummer or Paperboy (alive) at any sort of soccer event, it is because they have been offered a lot of free stuff, including golf balls and cable for life. And all of Florida – without the snakes.

So if you were going to offer, no thanks: I don’t need tickets.

Dear Ask the Paperboy,

What is the hardest thing you’ve ever tried to do? I ask with the knowledge that you have done many things, including climb Driskill Mountain, Louisiana’s highest point, all 535 feet, single-handedly on your feet and with no rope, pick, oxygen tank or even a power bar.

Archie in Arcadia

Dear Arch,

Wow. That’s taking Paperboy back. That was an impressive day. Well, an impressive half-hour. Thanks for remembering. (I did have to stop for a refreshing Mountain Dew. I mean, I don’t run on batteries, you know.)

Now, while that was tough (as you can only imagine), it is nothing like trying to fold a fitted sheet. Einstein and his smarter brother together couldn’t fold a fitted sheet.

Dear Ask the Paperboy,

If you write something and it's wrong, you might have to re-do it. If you lay some concrete and you mess up a spot, you might have to re-do it. Why is it when someone does something to you, you feel you have to retaliate. Have you been "taliated" to begin with? What is a "taliate" anyway?

Pig Shelton in Re-no

Dear Pig,

“Taliate” in a strict sense means the same thing as “retaliate,” honest to goodness, although it is seldom used because of the simple fact that it sounds so stupid. I’m sure a poet’s behind that, somehow. But in slang – as you are asking so you can come to understand it and be able to move on with your life and worry about other things -- taliate is what one does (pokes me in the eye) that causes another to retaliate (threatens to maim him unless he properly folds your fitted sheet, just for instance. Or – the ultimate indignity -- you make him go to a soccer game.) Unlike love, it is not better to have taliated and lost than never to have taliated at all. If you don’t want to be “retaliated on,” the initial taliation situation better get the job done.

For funsies, you can start your own language with what English whizzes call “unpaired” words, which “retaliate” is close to being. The list includes dejected (is “jected” elated?) and disgruntled (a personal favorite), incognito, nonchalant, invert and the always funny sounding debunk – not to be confused, as our resident Cajuns would say, with desink or destove. Language is a beautiful thing.

Email teddy at teddy@latech.edu

Celebrating 25 years of a special Light

From today's TIMES and NEWS-STAR

At our best, we serve “the least of these.”

Such a belief and a hope has been the power behind a quarter-century of sweet illumination from LightHouse.

The short word for what LightHouse is would be a “program,” but programs are run by people, this one by people who believe that by shining a light on children in gloomy places, a full life is both given and received.

LightHouse lists as its goals “educational achievement, economic self-sufficiency and productive citizenship,” and its aim is the hundreds of families in some of Shreveport and Bossier City’s poorest neighborhoods. Education, LightHouse believes, is the way out of poverty. So with tutors and volunteers and coordinators to organize and encourage, LightHouse has suddenly turned 25 years old, a silver anniversary worth celebrating as it’s been an underrated gold mine for the area.

Plans are ongoing for a “formal” September celebration to mark when LightHouse, which had its beginnings in 1986, became a part of Volunteers of America in 1989. When the schedule is finalized and publicized, be aware: this might be your chance to investigate LightHouse and, if you haven’t already, help light the way for another of the more than 600 children and families it’s touched.

“We’re always in need of daily tutors who want to help with homework or reading,” said Tricia Jowell, LightHouse community development director. “We especially need male mentors; a lot of our children are being raised by single-parent moms.”

“Each volunteer represents ‘attention’ that can be given to students,” said program coordinator Bailee Winterrowd. “It’s simply awesome to watch a student enjoy the presence of a volunteer or mentor.”

What’s in it for you? Winterrowd thinks you’ll be surprised. She was. She found out why she was involved when she heard an interview on National Public Radio. An interviewee explained how his profession as a judge gave him “the opportunity to exercise compassion and patience,” the judge said, “something I may not be fabulous at, but I get the chance to practice every day.”

“My position at the LightHouse requires I practice such qualities – I need patience!” Winterrowd said. “I am confident I am here only because God is being gracious with me.”

She’s been with LightHouse only a year. In her first six months, she’d already seen newer LightHouse students pull multiple grades of F in school up to B’s in just one grading period. She’s seen drastic changes for the better in behavior. “I’ve seen fifth-grade boys really take pride in their writing and in finishing a long book,” she said, and illustration of little things that become big things, like diplomas.

Coming back for the “reunion” in September will be many college graduates, “gobs of them!’ said Sondra Dixon, who’s worked with the LightHouse for 23 years. Excitement seems to be the default tone of anyone who has invested in “the LightHouse kids.”

Don Webb is a former interim pastor at First United Methodist of Shreveport, where the program began. He’s wondered at times what might happen if Jesus came back to town today. Would he see the homeless sheltered, the distraught comforted, the hurting healed?   

“I believe He would come to the LightHouse, and find Himself at home there,” Webb said. “For He’d know what’s going on. He’d see faith at work, and feel the care; and He’d know the blessings in the faces of the children.

“What happens in the LightHouse is a win-win-win situation,” Webb said. “Christ’s heart is made glad that this work of active love makes so many whole and happy; the servant-leaders are made glad, in doing what they were born for and are finding joy in; and best of all, the children are made glad, as they are loved, and lifted to new levels of life.”

If that sounds over-the-top, you’ve never been either to a LightHouse graduation or to any of LightHouse’s six sites. Try it, or try to make one of the anniversary-week get-togethers. As it does for children, LightHouse will brighten your life.

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