It happened in England in 1989

Sitting here tonight, (Sunday night 10-23-2011 2345) I am reminded that testimonies are important...they also are things that NO ONE can ever take away from you. They are unique to us all and our own faith journey, and I think God allows us to have them so that they can be remembered to encourage others and encourage ourselves long after the mountaintop type of experiences that the Lord allows us to have. There are so many things in life that I am not sure of, it seems the older I get the more complicated life seems to become, but I do know one thing, I have experienced some amazing things with God in my life, and they can never be taken away from me. I remember speaking once, a few years back to an amazing priest friend of mine, a man who I really think of as very a very holy person, whose hands handle the body of Christ, and whom I really respect. I started talking about times that I had experienced the Presence of God, powerfully, personally...and just assumed that he knew what I was talking about. It was a shocker to me that he had never experienced anything like what I was talking about...it also occurred to me, that he didn't need to have either, his faith was just as strong. It also occurred to me just how blessed I was to have these memories. It happened back in England in 1989, I was in the Air Force then stationed at R.A.F. Upper Heyford and I lived off base near the village of Croughton at #2 Pimlico Farm in Oxford shire. I had a small cottage there that I just loved, a very quiet spot with a little bubbling creek behind the cottage. I was a member of a very vibrant Pentecostal Church there called The Christian Serviceman's Center. I was a faithful member there who felt a call to minister on my life, and was doing my very best to serve God and love my neighbor with all of my heart. Of course I had many failings and shortcomings, but God was merciful with me and I grew strong in the Word and in the fellowship of the faithful there. I would often sit near my red brick fireplace and meditate on the word and pray. I would often start out reading my bible, and then would be get into deep study only to be brought to my knees thanking God for all His blessings, interceding for my friends, family, and my church, and I would always feel that warm presence of the Holy Spirit come over me, comfort and strengthen me even in the damp English winters. But this one night was different, and if I were to die tomorrow, I would want people to know about it, because it was real, and I would never deny this to the point of death. I was there, reading my Bible, and I felt compelled to go to my knees, but this time, not burdened to ask God for anything...but out of love, I just wanted to tell Him how much I loved Him, and how I wanted to get closer to Him. This is where things got strange. My eyes were closed, and suddenly I felt an overwhelming presence in the room, like a million volts of electricity were pulsing around me thumping....Holy, Holy, Holy..suddenly I was terrified, because although my eyes were closed, I could see a light through those closed eyelids...fill the room with a penetrating warm light! I knew it was all around me, and for the first time I really understood those scriptures that talked about the "fear" of the Lord. Although I intrinsically knew that God was my Father, and that He would never harm me, I understood Peter when he said, "Get away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!", or Isaiah when he said, "I have seen Him and must die because I am unholy! I am not kidding, I was really afraid, and I just knew that if I opened my eyes I would see the Glory of God in the room with His angels in array, and I would surely stroke out right there. And so I knelt there, frozen, terrified, but so honored to know that He had chosen to visit me for some reason this night. I trembled and slowly from behind my closed eyelids the light seems to dim and I could smell Frankincense in the room, like from my memories of Midnight Mass from when I was a little boy....how it would fill the room and perfume everything and everyone...Holiness was about! And so, it all slowly faded away...and I knew that the throne room had come to me that night, and though I don't know why it happened, or why God chose to bless me in this way, the memory of that night has long encouraged me when my faith fell on harder times. When the world seemed turned upside down and church seemed like an empty emotion generating machine with no depth...when the people I though were holy seemed shallow to me and let me down at me lowest point. When the Presence of God seemed to be totally absent, and I would study and pray and just.....nothing. I would think back to that night and say, NO, I know it was real...and I probably experienced something that night that many men would have begged to have experienced...so I should not doubt now. Reflect back...remember...be encouraged, you were visited once...

Why Didn't The World Stop







Recently, on July 20th of this year, I lost my dad, James Kenneth Holder to a major stroke. I had been thinking about blogging about it to get some of this out of my system, but had held back because I did not want to hurt anyone's feelings along the way. Now that I have had some time to think about it, I am moving ahead, because mostly this blog is about me, my thoughts and my family, plus it is cheaper than a therapist and I think it will help me, he, he!



I suppose I am experiencing what a lot of victims of crime say that they feel...like after a trauma, they feel sort of suspended in time, their world has stopped and they are flabbergasted and even angry that the world has the gall too keep on spinning in spite of their pain. Doesn't the world know what has happened to me? I can't believe that things are just going to keep going? These are silly questions we all know, but we still feel them whether they are silly or not. I am still taking it all in, now that the Memorial is over, my dad's ashes have been spread, and his things gathered up...now I get to grieve I guess, my turn. A turn I'm not sure I'm ready to take. Yesterday I spent the day working on my car...I reached a stopping point with a problem I was having and found myself reaching for the phone to call my dad for advice like I always do, then I realized that mom has turned dad's phone off...and the number is gone...and so is dad. This sort of thing just seizes me up, time seems to just stop and an ache rises up from deep down inside of my heart that seems bottomless. A darkness flows over me when I realize that the days of those phone calls are long gone, gone forever. I find myself talking to dad all the time and wanting to hold on to everything I can of him to try and keep him around...and resenting the heck out of anyone who wants to hurry that process up and get rid of all of those same things. They say you never really become a man until your father dies, I think sometimes I'd like to strangle whoever said that. Perhaps we do have to grow up a little more when our father's die, but I don't think any of us are ever ready to do that.



There are so many things that I miss about my dad.
• I miss the way he smelt, whether it was his Old Spice aftershave or the way he smelt after working outside all day...there was a comforting smell about my dad that's difficult to explain. When I was a boy, I used to love to curl up on the couch and take a nap with my dad on lazy Sunday afternoons...I'll never forget how safe I felt there.
• I miss the way he would tell stories about the Navy, and I'd laugh like crazy when he'd go into some obscenity laden rant about something that annoyed him.
• I miss the way dad had seemed to be calling me more and more often in the year preceding his death. He always call and brightly say, "This is you dad..." when he was leaving me a message, just like he did the day of his stroke, only an hour or so right before. I told him I loved him all the time, I never did miss a chance, and for that I am grateful. I helped plan a Memorial service for a bunch of people down on the lake, and realized that I didn't know hardly any of them...and felt strangely alone in the crowd of people that had gathered there.
• I miss my dad's hands. He has my same very white complexion, and his hands were covered in scar tissue, scratches and bruises from working on air conditioners and all manner of junk in his workshop under his lake house. His skin was always reddened by the sun, and his hands were strong, way beyond their size. In dad's last week after the stroke, he was only able to move his left hand, but it was as strong as ever, and he could push you away or pull you in with that hand as forcefully as he ever could.
• I miss the way that dad understood all my issues at work, as a police officer, he knew exactly what I was going through. He would sit and listen, share advice, and never made me feel like a kid, it was man to man and I knew that I was accepted no matter what I said.
• I miss the way dad always made all of us feel safe. Dad was strong way beyond his size, and though a quiet man, he would explode on anyone who threatened his family. As a kid, I always slept so sound knowing that no one would dare try and break into our house, because my dad, the toughest cop in the world, would beat them up, shoot them or some combination of the two that no one would ever want to discover...and no one ever did.
I 've mentioned in a previous blog entry about the comfort I used to get as a kid from hearing my dad come home late at night from work and hearing his heavy leather boots fall on our hardwood floors. Hearing that and the creaking of his leather gun belt and the smell of his after shave always made me feel so safe and I would go right to sleep. Now, it is my heavy leather police boots that hit the floor each night, my gun belt that creaks, my keys that jingle...but when I peel off all the turtle gear and crawl into bed, I'm still that kid in his speedy Gonzales footie pajamas who is still waiting up for his daddy to come home and who wonders why the world didn't stop turning.

A Few Thoughts About the Myth of Race

Y'all bear with me while I rant a bit, okay?

This past summer, I was honored to be chosen out of a small group of Texas Chiefs of Police by LEMIT (The Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas based out of Sam Houston State University) to take part in an international policing program that was sent to train with the Polish national Police. One of the interesting topics that came up with the Poles was...what is a redneck? It got quite a varied response from our group, and it seems that we were not of the same mind on the definition. To some, the term redneck brings up the image of a tobacco chewing, gun toting, cowboy hat wearing racist who is uneducated, ignorant and violent towards anyone that is not white and right as he sees himself. To others he may be a guy who chews tobacco, carries a gun, wears a John Deer ball cap or a cowboy hat, comes from a rural area and may or may not be college educated....BUT...is a hard working, salt of the earth kind of guy who although may not be very culturally acclimated, doesn't hate anyone, and is a good hearted simple person who is patriotic and has good command sense. So to some, being called a redneck might be an insult....an insult that might be applied to those of us who might have a particularly noticeable southern accent. I find that particularly distasteful to be branded as a racist or ignorant simply because of the dialect of the English from Louisiana that I grew up in. But, there are many who judge southern white males in this fashion. To others, being called a redneck could be taken as a compliment...yeah, their neck is red because they've spent the day on a tractor out plowing up the lower forty acres to grow the food that you're family is eating tonight. Their neck is red because they have been out working the cattle that become the hamburgers your family will eat tonight as well. They might think it a badge of honor to be called a name that denotes hard work that is noble and simple at the same time. A name that to them co notates good horse sense and a non nonsense approach to life. So do you see how such a simple little term like redneck can bring about such a varied response from people? I suppose it all comes down to who is using it, about whom, and to whom it refers to in a particular context....man is the English language complicated or what?This brings me back to a thought that has been really on my heart a lot recently. I have spent the majority of my life in public service, in military service and in civil service as a police officer. I have worked in majority minority areas of Dallas/ Ft Worth where there was either an extremely large black population or large Hispanic population. Wherever I have worked I have tried to acclimate myself to the people and environment in which I was operating, so that I could effectively serve in those areas. I learned Spanish pretty well so that I could interact with my Spanish Speaking citizens, and I did my best to reach out to my black citizens and make myself vulnerable and approachable to them. Often times, I found myself automatically assumed that I was a white racist by members of the black community because of the sins of my fathers. What I mean is, the many white officers who had worked there before my time who really were racist or at least indifferent to the very real problems of the African-American community, for lack of a better term. The officers had done so much harm, that it sometimes made my job impossible to effectively accomplish since there was such a high wall built up between them and us...and very few willing to reach over that wall with an open hand, and more often with a closed fist. I hated that, but that was just the way it was...life in the big city. I would like to think all of that is changing with a better integrated police force and a newer generation coming about who doesn't take race as such a huge issue as others have in the past.

Nowadays, as a Chief of Police for a small East Texas city...I am still dealing with this issue, as now all police officers are required to take cultural diversity on an ongoing, continuing Ed basis. It seem that the sins of our fathers were so severe that the pendulum has swung 180 degrees in the opposite direction, at least in my profession, to where we are having to document the race of every person we stop and all of the details. I understand the reason behind folks wanting this kind of detailed accountability, but sometimes it seems oppressive, as if we didn't have enough mistrust to deal with already!

I'd like to take a few minutes here and lay out some personal effects that this whole race issue has had in my family, and "bare my neck" as it were to this issue.I married Lucia Isabel De La Garza in 94, who I met in college in Tennessee after I got out of the service. I fell in love with Lucia within days of meeting her and knew that I wanted to make a life with her. Her family had emigrated from Mexico, and her dad was a Pentecostal minister, as well as the majority of her family members. My parents didn't take it so well. Now don't get me wrong here, I love my parents more than anything, but let's just say that they are a product of their times and the racism that was the norm in those times...now does that excuse racism, of course not, but that is simply how I have to view them, through the prism of the their worlds view. We have to love our families the way they are, and while we don't have to buy into their worldview, we are called to love them in a Christ like way, and leave the doors open for communication. My folks never quite accepted Lucia because she was "A Mexican", even after my son Santiago was born. They did their best to tolerate here, and tried to treat her well for my sake, but I could always tell that it was just under the surface. In my house N word was as common as any other word, but I observed a dichotomy in how my folks lived around and treated the black folks that we came in contact with. My dad would use the N-word, but then when I saw him talk with black folks, and interact with black police officers that he worked with, he was always kind, and professional. I couldn't quite figure that out. He was one of that generation who used that N-word, but didn't always mean it in a derogatory way, it all depended on the context in how he used it, kinda like the whole "redneck" deal previously discussed. Of course no one can ever sanction the use of a word that has caused so much hurt over the years, and I am not trying to justify it, I am simply trying to apply a context to his use of the word. At the end of the day though, the whole idea of separate but equal, Jim Crowe society was absolutely in line with their thoughts and feelings about race. I grew up understanding this, and although my life experiences caused my views to differ from my parents, I learned that if I were going to keep a relationship with them, I was going to have to accept them the way they were.My brother Darl's daughter, my niece, Denise, got pregnant a few years ago out of wedlock with a black boyfriend of hers. This totally shocked the whole family. The truth is, that Denise had grown up in a side of town that was pretty ethnically diverse, with a racially diverse group of friends. It turn out, that she seems to be particularly attracted to black guys. My major concern for Denise was for the boyfriend to be responsible and help her with raising the baby, and I wanted whoever it was to have a job and be a guy who would take care of my niece and treat her right. The fact that the guy was black.....wellllll, I knew that there was going to be a defecation storm in my family over that one. Inter-racial relationships are never easy, it doesn't really seem to matter where.....it just seems to be one of those facts of life. I did wish her the best, and I felt kind of bad that I had not been in Denise's life more, but I had been out of state in college, or working in Texas....so I had just been out of the area for so long it was difficult to keep in touch. Turns out that the boyfriend beat my niece up, had no job, and was in and out of jail quite a bit.....these things did not endear him to me, but they had nothing to do with the color of his skin. Since then, Denise has moved on, she's a single mom and is pregnant again with another guy...who happens to be black....but she says that this guy has a job and treats her right. I hope that is true, and I love my niece and only want her to be happy and healthy. I also want her children to be a part of our family, to be loved and accepted...and I fear that might not happen. Her choice in men has made her name anathema in my parents' home, and I hate that. They simply can not countenance the fact that she has chosen to date black men....and have kids with them as well. it is simply too much to digest and they feel like somehow she has betrayed them...geeeeesh, it was bad enough that their son married a Mexican, now this? !Oh well...what are ya gonna do? I pretty mush drug my brother and my mom kicking and screaming to the hospital when Denise gave birth to little Jayden...I highly doubt they will make this next delivery.

Like I said, I love my family, but this is the reality that I must deal with.I see race from an anthropological perspective, call me naive, and call me what you like, but this is my view. Recently, National Geographic conducted a DNA trace on the origins of man, and was able to actually map out the migration of human being all across the earth since the last ice age. What they discovered, is that we all started out with the oldest DNA traceable, with the Massai peoples in Africa. These are the Bushmen that speak in clicks and pops, and still live this way today. So about 15,000 years ago today, all of what we call "races" were living inside this one group of people that migrated over the earth. As the years and climates where these folk lived changed, they adapted and dare I say, "Evolved" to develop characteristics which would help them survive in their new environments. As a Christian, I believe that an all-knowing, all-loving, benevolent God gave human beings DNA that could change to suite the environment in which His children found themselves...and this ability to adapt is a wonderful example of his own diversity and mercy. So...when one looks at the DNA of human beings, forget all that you've ever heard about race and culture, you have to come down to the single, undeniable fact that all people sprang from these small golden colored peoples in Africa, many, many generations ago. That would make our modern understanding of race and ethnicity a totally concocted myth. Race is as men define it, and it changes all of the time. Being Aryan is what the Nazis said it was, being African -American can mean totally different things to different people. My doctor, who is a native of Nigeria, and now a Naturalized American citizen, considers himself and African American...but then again, so does Teresa Heinz Kerry, since she was born in Africa...but is as cracker as they come, he, he. How about the majority of black Americans...what are they? DNA studies show them to have as much or more than 40% European ancestry. So who knows, race is what we say it is, it is subjective and changes all the time. It can not be counted on to be a fixed, objective term. It is quite simply a myth. I say we determine it by behavior. As one of my favorite media commentators, Dennis Pager likes to say, there are two races, the human beings and the non-human beings, and you can tell them apart by how they treat their fellow man. I think I'll be sticking to this view...it squares up with everything that my faith informs my conscience...

Race is exactly what you make of it, and like it or not, we all have a grandmother back in Africa that clicks when she talks and probably knew how to field dress a wildebeest.I wish we could all lighten up about this whole race thing, wouldn't it be nice if the whole world could just get past the superficial and recognize that these differences are more of a cultural nature, not a racial one.The way the world operates today with all of the false hyper-sensitivity, it seems it might turn a totally non-biased person into one because of the environment in which we live.My hope is that we can all be proud of our genetic (racial) heritage, and marvel at the hand of God and His workmanship. We can be proud of our ancestors who endured so much in their perilous struggle to survive after the last ice age, and how unlikely it was that they made the circuitous trek around the globe and spread humanity over every continent, despite all odds being against their survival. Now there's a race to be proud of, the Human one, this rises about our darkest inclinations, and points back to the Creator reflecting His diversity, creativity and hope for the unity of man.

Just My 2cents......Ken

This past weekend was my dad's 68th birthday. We all gathered around under the cypress trees and Spanish moss and clogged our arteries with smoked briscuit, potato salad and Mexican cornbread....ain't we a mix! It was really great to see my Uncle Bubba and Aunt Bernadine were there...I realized just how much I have missed seeing them over the years.

It's funny how you can just look up and see how life can age everyone before ya know what the hell happened. There are some nights when I sit in my little room with just my guitar, my regrets and my memories and wonder when the hell did I grow up? Surely it wasn't that long ago was it? Sometimes it seems like just yesterday all I had to worry about was putting gas in my Maverick and how I was going to get the summertime girls that visited the lake from Dallas out of their jeans. Somewhere, somehow along the way we all grew up and older. I guess I'm pretty lucky, somehow through it all I stayed sober and off any addictive substances...not too many in my circle ever did. Somehow we all worked out our dysfunctionalities in different ways I guess. There's just never been anything I wanted in a bottle...there were occasions though, perhaps that's how I wound up married to a stripper at 18, but I always say that one doesn't count, it didn't last very long anyway, and besides, I was hormonally challenged at the time...it's a mulligan. I never have lived through life looking through beer goggles, I guess I always just muddled through the hard way with my awkward self..

My brother and mother are making a good effort at sobriety, and I admire them for making the decision to get clean and sober after so long being a slave to alcohol. My Grama used to say they call it "Spirits" fro nothing, and I think she was onto something there. God knows alcohol has only brought grief and pain to our family...a lot of bad violent memories that I can not forget, jail cells, death, and broken marriages and relationships that simply can not be repaired after the damage is done. I am very thankful that these changes for the better are taking place in my family. There is a part of my that is cynical about real change in people, it's just the cop in me who has seen so many jailhouse conversions and broken promises. A man simply has to be sceptical to a degree to be a good cop, the trick is to not let it poison you to the extent of being a total cynic.

When did I get so jaded in my thinking...I sometime wonder how all this happened, but in between the cell phones, the radio calls, the long hours kids and dogs and cats that need feeding, well....I just shrug it all off. I used to see things as so black and white....my dad used to tell me that someday I would find the world wasn't so cut and dry like that, he was right...he seems to get smarter as I get older...funny how that work eh?

Sometimes, I just want to go back to a simpler time, sit under the cypress trees with my guitar like I did when I was 15, and lose myself in the cool wind off the lake and the sounds of the crickets and frogs as back up to an old Skynnard song.

Tonight I'll sit in my little room with my guitar, and pound out a lil music that nobody but me wants to hear, and wonder...where will I be at my 68th birthday party? Will I have have more regrets stacked up, more wounds, war, and pain to deal with, or will I have reached some serenity in my life? I think I'll just pray for mercy now, mercy for my family, mercy for my present and mercy for my future.

The jingle of keys and the creaking of leather in the night...

Here lately, I've found myself thinking about my dad a lot. It's funny that I find myself venting a little here...since I know I haven't updated this blog in forever, and that no one will probably ever read this...but I guess God knows, so that's good enough for me.

Recently my dad had a stroke and it scared us all to death, because it was just a very short while ago when we lost my grandparents...and we were'nt really over all that yet. I watched my dad suffer through a lot of pain in the time that he was hospitalized, and his recovery has been on and off, although the stroke was not severe enough to cause speech or very serious mental disfunction, it did put dad in a lot of pain and made it difficult for him to walk and function normally...and still does. I spoke with dad today, and he was at home under the house where they have a little shop, he was out drinking a cold beer and chatting with his country neighbors and seemed to be in really good spirits. I think about dad every day, he is about 3 hours away from me and I always worry about him because that ole fart will never tell me the truth about how he's really feeling. I get the usual, "Oh, I'm fine", answer every time I ask.

Every day I go through a little ritual, that my dad did for many years and that both my brothers did as well for a few years. I call it "suiting up", or "puttin on my costume" as dad used to call it. One of dad's old neighbors used to say that he knew who my dad really was, that the law-man uniform that he wore was just a costume, that in his heart he was just a good ol' boy like all the other river rats around the lake. My ritual starts out with, what in the heck did I do with my gun? Oh yeah, there it is! I round up all my gear, I call it my "turtle gear"...and if you've ever seen a cop in full tactical rig, you'll know what I mean...you really can't move too well in all that stuff...so you kinda feel like a turtle, trying to hut...hut...hut around as best you can praying that you don't fall down on your back...cause God knows you'll never be able to get up on your own...and boy is that embarrassing when the news cameras are on you! Anyways, I get all the turtle gear together, and then I put on my ballistic vest...that usually reminds me of the dangerous business that I am in...and I often whisper a little prayer that God will keep me safe and give me wisdom in the coming hours to be a good and breathing....public servant when my day is over. Next comes the shirt, fastening on my badge, my lieutenant's bars, and my name tag along the way. Then the pants, did somebody shrink these or what? Then my boots, then my gunbelt, or as I call it, my "bat belt". I go through this little routine as thousands of other law enforcement officers do every shift, every day, a long thin blue line that stretches back in history. A routine that seperates us out as those who do our best to keep the line between chaos and order apart as best we can with the tools given us...mostly a sharp wit, an honest love for people and a sense of calling. This little ritual unites us all, a brotherhood of men and women who daily lay thier lives out there on the line for the good of society as a whole, cause God knows it ain't for the money and doughnuts people! I like my gear, I wear a nylon rig so it's light, flexible and quiet, not so in the rigs of my dad's year.

Which brings me to my title....one of the memories that comes to mind all the time is from when I was a small boy, about 5 or 6 when we used to live in Shreveport Louisiana, and dad was on the Shreveport Police Department. Dad worked the evening shift for quite a few years, and somehow I was always keenly aware of the danger he faced every day out on the streets, strange thing for a little kid to be aware of. So.....when I would go to bed at night I'd always pray for my dad, and I would try to stay awake till when he got in..usually very late. I'd find myself rousing to the sound of the front door, I was very light sleeper, and I still am. There was nothing more comforting in the world to me that the sound of dad's heavy leather boots and gunbelt and the jingling of his keys as I heard him walking down the hallway. The leather made a soft creaking sound as dad moved about and his footfalls were heavy and solid under his sturdy frame...and I felt so safe, knowing that dad was home to protect us all from any burglars that might be lurking out there in the dark. As dad neared my room, I could smell the leather and the Old Spice aftershave he always wore. Often he would stop at my bedroom door looking in on me....sometimes he would come in my room and put his hand on my back if I was moving around a lot.....and I would go right to sleep knowing that he was there and everything was going to be okay.

I miss those quiet peaceful time, when the whole world was quiet, it was just me and dad, and everything was okay in the world. I'm not sure many people ever get to feel that safe, so I'm gratefull for those memories. I had a dream about dad the other night...I was a little boy waiting for him to come home.

Someday I know it's going to be something of the same feeling, someday I'll be able to lay down the gun, hang up my boots, take off the costume without having to worry about protecting everyone else anymore. I'll be able to get back in my footie pajamas and crawl up in bed and rest, knowing that my Father is watching over me and all is well. Till then, I get home at night, I walk to my son's bedroom, I lean down and kiss him on the head and tell him that I love him as he snores away. He always looks so innocent when he's asleep....wish I could keep him there protected from all the the hate and danger out in the world...but for now, I just whisper a prayer for him....take off the turtle gear and wonder how my dad's getting along tonight down on the lake...

Proverbs 19 :14
House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, But a prudent wife is from the LORD.

My wife has been wondering when and if she'll wind up in this blog. It's kind of weird knowing that she will probably read this. I didn't want to just post up the usual platitudes and B.S. that might be easy to say. Tonight as she and my son are sleeping in their beds, my thoughts turn to her and the peace that she has brought to my heart.What is peace of mind worth? What is trust worth? What is fidelity worth? More than anyone can ever know ever pay or ever plumb. This week coming up is my wife's 34’Th birthday. Laura is a woman that has been with me for about five years now. She has had to tolerate so much....the nutso lifestyle of a cop. The burden of being the breadwinner when I was down with three different back surgeries. Step-mom to another woman's child....and all the drama of constant contact with an ex can bring! I know that I couldn't have done it all, tolerated it all and on top of it, loved me through it all. Laura runs through my mind like a sweet cool stream through all the chaos if my mind. Somehow the thought of her keeps me calm no matter what tragedy seems to be breaking out at any given moment. Her constant love and tenderness is what has kept me so enthralled with her. I know she's always going to be there. I really thought that about my first wife as well, but underneath it all, I guess I always knew that she would be there always if: if I didn't stray away from the image that she had of me; if I didn't change from what she wanted me to be; if I didn't grow and stretch myself beyond what she could handle; if I never broke out of the mold that she had planned for me...it was those if's that are the natural evolution of a person over time. Over time I changed, and that just wasn't acceptable. It just goes to show that you never know what will happen in the future, but judging by all the things that Laura and I have been through in the past few years, I think that I can safely say that I have the room I need to grow, stretch, change, and just be true to myself and yet can be assured that when the day is over, she will still be on my side. We all need that someone to be for us, even when the world is against us. I can tell you this, I have certainly been there in the past year or so...when even the bottom looked up! When the old friends have disappeared, and phone calls stop...there are usually very few people left who are really to be all or nothing for you. I have been blessed to have Laura on my side.I guess all my life I've had some serious trust issues with women. From my mom, another long story, to bad relationships. Perhaps I've just always demanded too much and expected too much. Perhaps it's always been me, I really don't know. With Laura, everything has just been so real. No fairy tale crap, just everything open with normal expectations, tolerance for each other and the will to be committed even when things get ugly. I guess it all comes down to the saying that love is not a feeling, but an act of your will. Laura even went as far as to converting to Roman Catholicism to marry me in the Catholic Church. I never asked her to do this for me, she really wanted to, and that really floored me. At the end of the day for me, it's all about trust. Somehow I have that deep down bedrock of trust with Laura that I've never had with anyone before, and I think that I can always count on that to be there for me, whether I'm right or wrong. Some moments just simply cannot be replaced. I'm one of these guys who just doesn't sleep well, and never sleeps heavy. Often I wake in the night and just watch Laura sleeping and wonder how I ever deserved someone as honest, decent, and lovely as Laura. She sleeps the sleep of the just, and is one of the most honest and righteous people I have ever known. Here lately, I have been having dreams of me and my grandfather having conversations. I miss him so much, and he is always on my mind. My granddad and Laura have so much in common when it comes to integrity and decency. There is a simple realism there, a true blue honesty that you can feel...and that the world is starved for these days. I like to think that I have brought stability and constancy to my family, but really it's been Laura who has buoyed me through the many trials of these past few years.There really isn't any price one can pay for perfect peace of mind and trust. Sometimes I think that I am just rotten and selfish and worthless.....life can sometimes just beat a man down to the dust. How many times can a man stand up and look for the piece of industrial equipment that has just left its gigantic tire tracks across his back? I tell ya what, quite a few! But every time I have made it back up to my knees, I have found Laura was still there, and sometimes just being there is enough.

Big Brother...

I grew up with one maternal brother, his name is Darl. Darl and I share the same mother, but biologically, a different dad. When my mom was a young woman, she had some difficulties at home and ran away to St. Louis. She dated a local guy there, and became pregnant with my brother. She wound up moving back to San Diego, where she met my dad. Dad accepted Darl as his own and raised him as his own. The fact is, Darl and I didn't know we weren't full brothers until I stumbled across his adoption papers as a 13 year old. That was a bomb that went off in our home! I think my dad may still be mad at me for that. He never wanted Darl to know. I guess I can understand that. Darl and I grew up pretty close, although we fought like cats and dogs off and on as kids...but there was that bond between us that only brothers can share. We often had the same friends, hung out in the same pool halls and did a lot of the same things. As we got older, Darl joined the National Guard, and then went full time Army. He had been dating a local girl and was ready to get out of the house and get on his own. Him and my dad had been in conflict quite a bit throughout his teenaged years. The conflicts between them seemed to be getting worse and worse. It wasn't an easy time in our home life, and all the drinking that went on didn't help. Mom and dad had been looking at some property on Caddo Lake in East Texas...Uncertain Texas to be exact. Darl soon left and was posted to Germany. I was still a kid and made the move with mom and dad out to Uncertain. I went from a school of several thousand, to one of about 200. In some classes, like trig, I was the only student! It was a big shift, but I really did enjoy being in the country. I got to hunt and fish more, and I got a lot of alone time. I really missed my brother though...and Darl was facing hardships of his own in Germany. He had married the girl he had been dating, and she was pregnant. They were having problems over there, and they were isolated, and that never helps. I had issues of my own back home. Mom and dad were having fish fries and parties at our place 4 nights a week! They were still driving back and forth to Shreveport to work every day too, I just didn't see how they could keep that up, God knows I couldn't have, and couldn't now! I'd often be in bed asleep, and some drunk person I didn't know would stumble into my bedroom looking for a place to relieve themselves....most of the time, they made it to the bathroom. I was not a happy camper; it was like my house was no a honky tonk, and I had nowhere to flee from it. What's funny is, that back then I thought this was pretty normal! But, that was mom and dad's lifestyle back then...they have mellowed considerably since then. It seemed like Darl and I were replaying scenes from my dad's life.... except our parents weren't too strict, they were just too liberal I guess. I really can't criticize them too much; they were just being themselves I guess. Mom and dad always had a pretty tumultuous relationship...there was always a lot of drama to be had. I always swore that someday I would have peace in my home, and I finally do. Most of all during this time...I missed my brother. He had always been there when I was little to protect me, and now he was gone.Time would roll on and Darl and I would both be in uniform and we would circle the globe opposite each other. Our lives would circle too; we would go through a couple of bad marriages at about the same time...it's funny how that happened! Just goes to show, you can separate brothers, but they still will stay in some kind of contact, even if it's not physical. These days my brother has been living with me as we both are going to Radiology school at night. It's kind of strange going to school with each other again after all this time, but it really is nice.Last night I had the most terrible dream. I dreamt that I was with Darl near a pool or a lake...somewhere near water, and somebody had shot or stabbed Darl in the chest. I rushed to his side and kept checking his pulse at the carotid artery, and could barely feel anything. I remember looking at his wounds and panicking, because I could not stop the massive blood loss, and knowing that his blood pressure was critically low. I had the same dream about 3 times, and it really freaked me out! Darl was away this weekend in East Texas, so I called him about it. Turns out he was okay, and was on his way back to our place. Just the thought of losing him really traumatized me...you can't ever replace a brother. A brother will stand by you no matter how stupid you are, how bad you screw up, or how broke and poor you are. Brothers are for life; they share the blood that is in your veins and the history that is in your mind. We so often take these things for granted in our lives. Today when I went to Mass, I made special mention of my brother Darl, and asked that God's grace would somehow flow through my feeble body and mind to Darl and to my family. In the end, it's family that is your cushion in this world...

Psalms 107 :41

But He sets the needy securely on high away from affliction, And makes his families like a flock.

Thinking about dad.....

I remember listening to the opening of a Waylon Jennings tape called, "A Man Called Hoss". It was meant to be a musical anthology of Waylon's work. He talks about how there had been a writer who wanted to write his biography. He states how if he did an honest one....there would be a lot of divorces and bad things that would result from it...that line always cracked me up, but if you really think about it, it's true with a lot of our lives. My story is not so hard to write, there's not too much too hide in my family, and there's a lot of freedom in that. We have lots of bad faults, but it's all out in the open pretty much. None of us really try and be anything that we're not...we're just us.

My dad had always been that way, open and honest with me. I can't ever remember the time that I ever felt deceived or lied to by him. I could always count on my dad to be that picture of honesty with me, even when it seemed everybody else was a bold faced liar. If my dad is anything, he is honest to a fault...and true to his own understanding of things. He's a lot more perceptive and understanding of things than many might give him credit for. The community that he lives in now just knows him as Jim the Air Conditioning man, but they really don't know the half of it. To them he's just another 'Good ole boy', but dad is no fool, he's been to the rodeo a few times as we say in Texas. The thing that always amazes me about the old man is that even if he is wrong, and stands to look bad...he never tries to hide it. It's that transparency about dad that makes me respect him so much.

Dad grew up in Gloster and Frierson Louisiana, a pretty rural farming community south of Shreveport that has hardly changed in a hundred years. Every time I ride out there, I am captured by the beauty of the land, full of dairy farms, quarter horse ranches and miles and miles of cotton. The old rusting cotton gins seem to call out to me as I pass them by, "Wait! Slow down, take another look at me, I have a story to tell of your people from long ago.." Dad was born in what amounts to a sharecropper shack...a very small house in the middle of a cotton field in Gloster, La. My grandfather was doing a little of everything in those days from Carpentering, to doing some oilfield work, to putting in water wells. Not too long after my Grandfather bought what would be his homestead. It took about 2 years to build, and my grandfather built the whole thing himself with some help from his brothers. In those days he worked sun up to sun down, so he had to build at night...and he certainly wouldn't work on the Sabbath. I take it that my grandfather ran a pretty tight ship back then, and my dad and his brother Tommy were chomping at the bit to get out of the country and get on their own. My Uncle George Thomas Holder was about five years or so older that dad...and he joined the Navy. Dad wasn't too far behind him and lied about his age and enlisted at 16. This would take dad all over the world, but mostly in the south pacific. Dad was an Electrician's mate, and was pretty good at it. He served on a number of different ships (USS Ajax and USS Chicago).


I know dad carries a lot of scars from those days, but I believe he genuinely enjoyed being a sailor, and wound up putting ten years of his life into it. It was in the Navy that dad learned to drink and smoke, those two things would come back to haunt him later in life. My grandparents had been tea totelers never really drank at all. But both my dad, and his brother wound up being pretty serious drinkers, but in those days, I guess it was that way for a lot of people...nothing too unusual there. My dad wound up getting out of the Navy and began working as an electrician in the shipyards there in San Diego, CA. It was there that he met my mom, married, and had me. When I was still a toddler, there was a big strike in the shipyards...and dad decided to move us all back home to Louisiana, in particular to my grandparents' home. Dad then took work as an electrician for the Shreveport Times newspaper, and drove quite a ways into town every day coming home very late. Around this time there was a big breakdown between my dad and his brother Tommy. Tommy (George Thomas Holder) was a Shreveport Fireman, and was drinking pretty heavy at this point in his life. Evidently, one night he got stinking drunk and wound up at my grandfather's house. There was an argument between him and my grandfather, and Tommy took a swing at my grandfather. Dad stepped in and wore Tommy out...and after that, they didn't speak for a good 20 years or so, unless they just had to. I got to know my Uncle Tommy years later and found out he had been a pretty rough character back then. He was am alcoholic, a Klansman, and a pretty degenerate guy all around. He tells the story of how he became born again, and how he actually heard the audible voice of God give him one more chance to get his act together. It seems that he did, and has lived an admirable life ever since.

My dad has drunk pretty heavily in his life, but he has always respected his parents...and that has always stuck with me. He always called his father Sir, or daddy, and I never failed to notice that. When he stepped over his dad's threshold, he became a kid again it seemed. He so wanted to please them, and wanted them to think well of him. I remember the time once when he and my mom were in the middle of a big fight. He thought for sure they were going to divorce. The biggest thing on his mind was how he was going to tell his parents that he had failed. He shook and almost wept when he said that, and it chilled me to the bone that as a grown man, with grown children, he still was so shaped by the opinion that his parents might have of him. It just goes to show you, that we never really grow out of our parents’ houses now do we?

Dad applied for the Shreveport Police Department in the early 70's, and that's the job I always remember him having. I remember how I used to try and stay awake as long as I could at night, knowing that my dad would be coming in late. I could hear his heavy leather boots, and the creaking of his gun belt as he came in the house. It was always then that I know I could go to sleep. I could smell his Old Spice Cologne, and I knew that I was safe. I was always aware of the risks he took defending our community, and the danger that he was in. Our home was a troubled one at times, with both mom and dad drinking pretty heavily, but they loved us and tried really hard to make our lives better than the ones they had known. Dad worked extra jobs on his nights off so that we could go to Catholic school, and mom did volunteer work at the school to keep us there as well (the Shreveport school system was terrible at the time). We went on lots of fishing and camping trips, and although we had plenty of troubles and plenty of conflicts due to the alcohol....we knew that we were loved, and that mom and dad were doing the very best that they could for us.

Years later, I would strap on my leather gear, pin on my badge, and walk out into the night to work. At the end of my shift, I would come come, trying to come quietly into my house. I would hear my leather gun belt creak, my boots fall heavily, and I would remember my dad...and check on my baby boy to make sure he was sleeping safe and sound.