Jim Morrison, My Friend K, The Trip, and Someone I Know

Fallon does Morrison on YouTube 

That video reminded me of the time my son John​ Ryan and I helped my friend K Brown move to Minneapolis from Guthrie, Oklahoma.

I hope you're sitting down to read this and have a minute or two, because I tend to wander while telling a story.

At the time this story starts I had been divorced for nine years and had not been in a relationship for more than a year. Scott was the first man in that nine years that I had actually wanted to live with. We broke up because I wanted a baby. At thirty-eight, I thought my time was running out. He didn't want a baby.

The break-up was painful, but unlike my romantic eleven-year-old son, I knew no one dies of a broken heart. I had no contact with Scott for more than a year. The amazing part was that I made no attempt to contact him. I used that year for me -- got physically and mentally healthy.

K was my best friend. She was my mother's age and probably the wisest person I ever knew. And the most elegant smoker in the world. Made me wish I smoked, which I just never could do. One of the few vices I didn't pick up. Thank goodness.

Minneapolis was her home town. Hers was a large family but none of them lived in Oklahoma. Her son lived in California and her grandchildren in Kansas. She had a vast array of friends near her, but as a widow, I think she just needed family. She needed to go home.

Plans were made, a U-Haul truck rented, and plane tickets back to Oklahoma for my son and me purchased. We'd be in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving.

Then a couple of nights before we left Scott called. He wanted to take me out to dinner. Hmmmm. Okay. But not until I got back from Minnesota. K's advice? "Don't worry about it. Let's just have a good trip."

K's friends helped us load the big truck with all K's worldly goods. I don't know how big, but really big. Bigger than anything I'd ever driven. It was big enough that I was grateful it was an automatic with power steering and breaks. Big enough that John Ryan had to CLIMB on top of the hood to wash the windows. Of course he wasn't as tall then as he is now. That was thirty years ago.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty full of myself, sitting up high above much of the rest of the traffic north bound on I-35. We pulled through a weigh-in station as we came into Kansas. Just like those other truckers. And discovered we didn't have to, because our truck wasn't that big.

We stopped in Wichita for lunch with K's grandchildren and former daughter-in-law. K's son and his family are Native American. That former daughter-in-law makes dee-luscious Indian tacos. From there I-35 angles northeast to Kansas City, Missouri, where I planned to meet a friend.

I had no idea Kansas City is so hilly. The rest of Kansas is just across the river and is flat as a pancake, as far as I could see -- literally. The skies were threatening, the temperature was dropping, and snow plows passed us as we turned into the parking lot at my friend's office building. Making sure I parked where I wouldn't have to back out.

I hadn't seen a snow plow since Gallup, New Mexico, on a trip some five years earlier with my son and my grandmother. (But that's a whole 'nother story.) I didn't know it was going to snow in Kansas City. And me driving an unfamiliar truck. A big truck. We didn't stop long.

I hoped to get ahead of the snow. Well, I didn't and it snowed. And snowed. By the time we got into Iowa, we had driven out of the snow. It wasn't sunny, but it wasn't snowing.  The plowed fields in Iowa were black with snow wind-scattered across them. They were so black I thought there must have been a terrible fire.

K was quick to explain to this red earth Oklahoman that that was the natural color of the soil. Black!

It rained most of the way into Des Moines. Everything was muddy and drizzly. It was near midnight. I was the only driver on this trip and I was exhausted. (K did not know how to drive. I had endeavored but failed to teach her in my standard transmission yellow Chevette. My son summed it up nicely, "Mom, she makes the car fart!" If you've ever tried driving with a clutch, you'll understand.)

And most of the motels along I-35 were full.

K and John Ryan let me take a shower first and go to bed. They were watching TV. You know how those motel rooms are -- two double beds and a couch.

(And this is what the Jimmy Fallon bit reminded me of.)

Through my half-awake eyes, I saw what looked like The Doors on TV. Now you know and I know that Jim Morrison died before my son was born, so it couldn't have been him. And music videos were not that common on TV in 1986.

I thought it was pretty odd that someone was impersonating Jim Morrison and The Doors. Elvis impersonators were weird enough, as far as I was concerned. I drifted off into much needed sleep.

Weeks later I learned that it had been old film of The Doors. And years later I saw the Fallon impersonation of Jim Morrison. Very funny, but not weird.

So we got K moved and flew home to Oklahoma. Minneapolis, by-the-bye, was a beautiful, clean city. We first saw it glinting in the setting sun. All glass and steel rising from the winter brown prairie.

After we got home, Scott came to pick me up for dinner. He asked me to marry him. And I said yes.

I called my brother, who did then and does now, live on the Texas Gulf Coast. "Guess what," I said.
"I'm getting married."

"You are? Is it anyone you know?" he asked.

Yep. We married New Years Eve. And he's someone I'm still enjoying getting to know.

We're in Trouble, BUT -- essay

image from usnews.com

We’re in trouble. As a nation. As a society. As a culture. 

We are undereducated which makes us susceptible to the worst of the charlatans selling snake oil to make us thin, beautiful, and long-lived. Susceptible to the worst of the schemers promising fool-proof investment strategies that will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams. To the worst of the politicians offering lowest-common-denominator solutions to poverty, crime, and terrorism. And to the worst of the promulgators of conspiracy theories. The Moon-landing hoax. Who killed JFK? Anti-Vaxxers. You name it. A group of shady someones somewhere are threatening our “good life.”

This blog post is not a conspiracy theory about how we got undereducated. And how our children are continuing to be undereducated. Ignorance has been with us since the beginning of time. You could argue that it’s human nature. BUT, to quote one of my favorite movie lines, "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” (Kathryn Hepburn as Miss Rose Sayer to Humphrey Bogart’s Charlie Allnut in The African Queen.)

Our various news services have announced the 2013 rankings, state by state, of our high school graduation rates, touting the overall average of 81%. BUT those various news services go on to say why that 81% may be misleading.

Each state has its own requirements for graduation. Each state has its own method of counting those students who do not graduate. And not all states were required to report. My natal state Oklahoma was one of the states given an extension. No numbers from there were figured in the 81% average.

One way we can compare the success of the education of these graduates is the ACT exam. It is the same for all who take it regardless of where they received their high school diploma or what kind of diploma they received. Some states have more than one kind of diploma

Iowa came in at Number 1 with a graduation rate of 90%. Iowa offers one type of diploma and does not require any exit exam to graduate. In 2014, 68% of Iowa’s graduating students took the ACT exam.

Of that 68%:  75% met the ACT benchmark for English, 52% met it for Reading, 48% met it for Math, and 47% met the ACT benchmark for Science. 

ACT benchmarks are “scores on subject-area tests that represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in corresponding credit-bearing first-year college courses.” (ACT) 

The State of Texas came in 2nd with a graduation rate of 88%. Texas offers eleven kinds of diplomas and requires graduates to pass exit exams in algebra and English. 40% of Texas’s graduating students took the ACT exam in 2014. (62% of Texas’s graduating students took the SAT exam, 33.9% of whom met the SAT benchmark score.)

Of that 40%: 60% met the ACT benchmark for English, 42% met it for Reading, 47% met it for Math, and 36% met the ACT benchmark for Science.

My home state of Colorado came in 36th with a 2013 graduation rate of 77%. Colorado offers two types of diplomas and requires no exit exams. 100% of the graduating students took the ACT exam in 2014.

63% of all graduating Colorado students met the ACT benchmark for English. 43% met it for Reading. 39% for Math and 36% for Science.

For me the most damning of these statistics is the very low percent of graduates who meet the ACT benchmark for Reading. Remember, those percentages are of percentages of percentages so the ACT exams can confirm only that slightly more than 29% of the Number 1 state’s graduating students meet the benchmark for READING. We’ve no way to tell what percentage of the 32% who didn’t take the test would have done. Not to mention the 10% who did not graduate.

Okay. So a person graduates from a less than admirable secondary school without an acceptable level of Math and Science education. If that person can and will READ, he can fill in the holes. Self-taught doesn’t have to mean substandard.

I could indict our national education system. But we don’t have one. Or our abysmal failure to support the fractured education system that we do have. We don’t support it by setting high standards. We don’t support it by firing subpar educators or respecting competent educators or rewarding the exceptional educators. We don’t support it financially.

BUT these failures can be corrected. We can work on correcting them at the local, state, and national levels. Expect quality and be willing to pay for it.

In the meantime, we can do what we can at home

I know if you’re reading my blog, you are a reader so I’m preaching to the choir. BUT us choir members can do something. We can read to the children in our lives. We can read around the children in our lives so they see reading as a good and desirable activity.

We can donate our books and magazines to places where they’ll be read again – schools, churches, libraries, medical clinics, rec centers, day care centers, nursing homes. And a whole bunch of places you can think of.

Give kids books – for their birthdays and Christmas. (Try to avoid giving that special nephew the same book two Christmases running like I did.) Drop a book in their Trick or Treat bag. How about giving them a book just because it’s Tuesday? Take them with you to the local public library so they learn that it’s their library.

And, while you’re at it, do these things for the adults in your life, too.