Month: September 2010

Have you ever read something and thought, “Wow, that person has just seen right into my soul?”

This happened to me yesterday, when Maile read a portion of Roald Dahl’s “Boy: Tales of Childhood.” She just finished reading it to our kids.  This is the portion that caught my attention.

“I enjoyed [working for a company], I really did. I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do. The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whiskey than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”

It’s been almost a year now that I’ve been writing for a living. Dahl expresses my sentiments exactly.

What is the risk/reward with your vocation? What about it do you love? What about it do you hate?

I wasn’t quite sure what to say when the man walked up and asked if we had seen his bag of candy. It was Sunday morning. The Great Frederick Fair’s last day was Saturday. All we had left to do was gather everything from our 40×40 foot tent, shoehorn it into our trailer and be on our way.

“Did anyone see a bag of candy layin’ around here?” the man asked. “I think I left it here last night.”

He was around 50 years old, wearing one of those mesh baseball caps, an untucked plaid shirt and navy pants that looked like they hadn’t been washed in weeks. His Santa Claus belly overlapped his belt, and he carried an unopened umbrella and some sort of small backpack.

“Sorry, man,” I said. “Someone must have grabbed it last night. We would have seen it this morning, if it was still here.”

He stared at me for a moment.

“You don’t think anyone handed it in at the lost and found, do you?”

I shrugged.

“We haven’t seen it.  But you could always check.”

I gave him directions to the office, all the while thinking to myself, “Seriously? You just came back out to the fairgrounds at 9:00 on a Sunday morning to retrieve a bag of candy?”

He walked away looking very nervous, wringing his hands, limping slightly. I saw him a little later in the day, still wandering the fairgrounds, still looking for his lost bag of candy. He was easily recognizable, not because of his appearance but because of the slow pace at which he traveled – everyone else there was cleaning up, ready to get home, moving at breakneck speed.

But when I saw him a third time, just before we left, a thought stuck in my head: if people care enough about something, they’ll go out at any time of day, any day of the week, to find it.

Then I had another thought, probably because my friend Ryan Dagen and I are planning a new Sunday morning service at our church, starting in January:

What does the church need to do to be perceived as valuable? With church attendance reaching new, all-time lows, what needs to change?

That guy was willing to get out of bed early and drive to the fairgrounds just to find a $2.50 bag of candy because, to him, it was valuable.

How can the church become valuable again?

Before I get into the meat (pun intended) of today’s topic, I’ve got two very important announcements:

1 – We’re still raising money for charity:water. Click HERE to track our progress, or to give.  Maile and I are matching the first $100 in gifts today – just go to the site, donate money, and put “shawnsmucker.com match” in the subject line. 5 minutes of your time and $10 and you’ll be contributing to someone getting clean water who doesn’t currently have it. Seriously. Put down your coffee, click on the link, and give. It couldn’t be easier.

2 – Time is running out for you to register for the upcoming Fireside Writer’s Conference. We’ll be talking with authors, professional social media types, bloggers, professors…all to find out more about the writing process.  Check out all the speakers and topics HERE. Or if you’re not available that weekend, at least go HERE and “like” it. I’ll feel so much better about myself (and you’ll get periodic updates on upcoming classes and other writerly events).

Now on to the most important list of trivial things you’ll ever encounter:

TUESDAY’S TOP 10 – BEST CARNIVAL FOODS OF ALL TIME

Having just returned from the Great Frederick Fair (which I wrote about in yesterday’s post, “My Third Favorite Day of the Year”), I’m going through a cleansing diet of sorts. The following are the top ten culprits, the foods that get me every year:

1. Funnel Cake – this mound of fried dough and powdered sugar always looks insurmountable, but before you know it you’ve eaten every last bite and proceed to lick the paper plate. Little do you know, you’re face is covered with the stuff.

2. Ice Cream – if you’ve read my Top 10 Ice Cream list, you know where my weakness lies

3. Jumbo Turkey Legs – I don’t even like these things, but I do like carrying them around because it makes me feel like Fred Flintstone

4. Fried Oreos – I’ve never even eaten these (yet), but the idea is sooooo carnival

5. Crab Cake Sandwiches – the best crab cake sandwich in the history of the civilized world is made at J.B. Seafood at the Great Frederick Fair. I can’t even talk about it without getting emotional.

6. Cotton Candy – it vanishes in your mouth. What else needs to be said?

7. Candy Apples – I don’t like apples, but I know that the masses will riot if this item is not included

Help me finish my list – what three fair food items am I missing?

Don’t forget to go to charity:water and give.  If you’re in the first $100 of donations today, I’ll match it.

There’s Thanksgiving Day, with its turkey and candied sweet potatoes and parades on television.

There’s Christmas Eve, with its serene sense of anticipation, and hope.

Then there’s the Monday after The Great Frederick Fair ends.

* * * * *

54 years ago my grandparents, young and Amish and looking to start a new business, took ham and cheese sandwiches to the annual fair in Frederick, Maryland. They set up a little tent with two of their friends outside the grandstand, holding little in the way of expectations.  But in those days they occupied one of three food stands on the fairgrounds, and suddenly they were making sandwiches as fast as they could.  They’d go behind the tent, laughing so hard they couldn’t help customers, doubled over in disbelief at how busy they were, overwhelmed.  That week they were forced to buy ham in Frederick to meet the demand.  They bought out every grocery store in town.

My mom grew up attending the Great Frederick Fair every year, and, after she married my dad, the two of them would attend every year, taking us with them when we were old enough to stay out of the way.

* * * * *

29 years ago the colors and sounds of the fair represented all that was right about the world to this 5 year old boy. Grandpa slipped me $5 bills and I’d sneak across the midway, buy a pack of candy bars or a funnel cake.  Then I’d sit under one of the back tables out of the way of the workers. Eventually I’d lay down, feeling the rough gravel through the thin blanket, hearing the guy in the next tent bark out “the greatest deal of the century.” I’d fall asleep, dreaming of lollipops and stuffed animals the size of skyscrapers.

* * * * *

Around 20 years ago my grandfather died, and soon after that my parents took over.  As I grew older the week turned into an opportunity to make some money running the register, or rolling soft pretzels.  Now, 54 years after my grandparents couldn’t keep up with demand, I’m running it alongside them.

* * * * *

Three days ago my oldest two kids came down on Friday night, and spent all day Saturday helping at the fair. My son Cade ran pretzels from one side of the tent to the other, yelling out “special!” when someone sold a special order. My daughter Lucy fell asleep behind the trailer, just inside the tent. When I peeked back there and saw her sleeping, I was amazed and saddened at how fast 29 years can go.

* * * * *

But today I am home.  Including the time it takes to clean up and tear down, the Great Frederick Fair lasted 12 days this year.  12 long days working 8am to 11pm. 12 long days of food and customers and cleaning up. 12 nights in a small motel room.

Today, returning home from the Frederick Fair, is always a good day.

There seems to be so much anger in our country these days.

Some folks in the Midwest seem to think that a man whose primary message was “Love your enemies” would have walked around proclaiming “Death to _______” (fill in the blank there with anyone they disagree with). Then there was the misguided man in Florida ready to burn the Qu’ran, as if that would do anyone any good.

We’ve been torn over the rights of a religious group to build a place of worship, all in a country founded on freedom of religion.  It seems we’ve thrown out (every one of us) any hope of coming together, instead relying on the legal system to legislate our beliefs (or lack thereof) – “don’t pray in school,” “don’t teach evolution,” “don’t teach creation,” “don’t be gay,” “don’t put a building there.”

Don’t be Buddhist.

Don’t be Muslim.

Don’t be Christian.

Don’t be Atheist.

And for goodness sakes don’t be kind or attempt to understand those you vehemently disagree with.  They’re just idiots. All of them.

It reminds me of a story in Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

“Since the United States went to war  in Iraq, I’ve been thinking about A.J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle. One rainy night, a reporter asked him, “Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?”

“Oh,” Muste replied, “I don’t do it to change the country, I do it so the country won’t change me.”

* * * * *

Is our hatred and disdain for others accomplishing anything other than making us into lesser individuals? Can we find the way of kindness, now buried so far under the rubble of hurt and confusion and unforgiveness? There is a power in kindness – it may be the only thing powerful enough to heal our current brokenness. I think that Anne Lamott, in her obvious disdain for former President Bush, shows us one way of viewing our enemies:

“I am going to pray for our president to believe that all people deserve to be fed, and to try to make that a reality…If I were more spiritually evolved, I would mail him a friendly card, because if you want to change the way you feel about people, you have to change the way you treat them. I know that Bush is family, and that I am supposed to love him, but I hate this – he is a dangerous member of the family, like a Klansman, or Osama bin Laden.”

“Maybe I can’t exactly forgive him right now, in the sense of canceling my resentment and judgment. But maybe I can simply acknowledge what is true, spiritually-that he gets to come to the table and eat, too; that I would not let him starve. In heaven, I may have to sit next to him, and in heaven, I know, I will love him.”

Can you pray for the one who riles you the most?

Can you send them a friendly card?

Can you acknowledge their humanity, even when it is hidden under the mask of a monster?

I don’t know if I can. But I will light my candle.

Back when I was a runner (it seems a thousand years ago), I learned that the only to way to get faster was to, each day, do a little more than I thought I could do.

Life is no different.

“We are all asked to do more than we can do,” writes Madeleine L’Engle in Walking On Water.

Sometimes we are asked to forgive the unforgivable.

Sometimes we are asked to survive that which we thought would surely destroy us.

Sometimes we are asked to tell the un-tell-able story.

What is life requiring of you? What impossible action are you now contemplating?