In Ohio, you join the teachers union. It is not an inexpensive membership. Dues can range from $650 to $800.

Every year the union gives you a knick-knack. Lunch box. A fleece blanket. Flash drive. Ren and I like to come home and proudly display our $650 whatever.

This year, because I wander the district, the union didn’t realize I was anywhere. The second to last day of school someone remembered my name on a list and forwarded me the 2010 union gift.

Here it is, my $650 water bottle.

Water Bottle with Tomato Paste

This is a bit tongue and cheek. I don’t, necessarily, have to join the union. It does give you some additional benefits – like access to a lawyer and – usually – decent representation when it comes to contract negotiations. In my – limited – opinion, the quality of teachers in Ohio ranks a good bit higher that what I saw in Texas. Part of this is a supply and demand issue. But part of it, I suspect, is that Ohio is a union state and Texas isn’t.

All that said, I hate the fact that unions are always willing to eat their young. And sometimes (like in Ren’s case) they’re run by fairly incompetent people. And, sometimes, they spend way too much time on protecting terrible teachers that need to go (although, in OHEA’s case I think they do a pretty good job of NOT doing this).

So I stay a member. Reluctantly.

When he was an adolescent, a tractor rolled over my grandad. He spent the better part of a year in a body cast and, throughout his very full life, would make many a visit to the surgery that, over time, I suspect, made him the bionic man. In all my memories he walked with cane, sometime two, but never let it slow him down.

Not one to back from a challenge, he choose construction as his trade. It was through that trade that I got to know him.

As a young boy I don’t think grandad knew what to make of his young grand kids. My earliest memories of him were of a smiling, white haired man, definitely loving, yet peering at me with a slightly quizzed expressions. I remember him poking me with his cane. He wasn’t the grandad that hopped on a bicycle to ride to the park (that was  my other grandpa).

It wasn’t that grandad wasn’t a people person. Far from it. To this day I think he was the most gregarious person I’ve ever known. But I think young children baffled him a bit.

My junior year of high school I went to work for him (like many an uncle, son-in-law, and my own father). My aunt and uncle hired him as the go to man for building their house. My second day of work he had me on masonry, lifting 40 lbs cement blocks up to other fellas who formed the foundation of separate garage structure. My body screamed in agony for the next three days, but it was bearable because grandad gave me a compliment.

“You did good,” he said.

“I did?”

“Yeah, the mason team wanted to hire you for the summer.”

For grandad, a measure of a man’s worth was in how well he did the job. And how well a man could pick up the skills for a job. For two wonderful summers, I worked beside him as he taught me many a carpenter’s skill.

One day he got it in his mind that we had to cap the chimney of my aunt’s 3 story home. Their roof was peeked, a steep 45 degree angle with the chimney at the end. Grandad first wanted to climb up the ladder and do it with me, but I told him that was a bad idea. He could shout directions from the level ground.

I started up. Once I got to the top of the roof I turned around only to see grandad following, his two canes hanging on his shoulders and the ladder moving with his gate. When he got to the point where the ladder contacted the roof he looked at me and said,

“Give me a hand.”

I did, with a good deal of trepidation because of the incline. As I grabbed his right hand, he slipped, kicking the ladder out from under him.

I threw myself over the peak of the roof and barely managed to grab his left hand before half his body slid of the roof. We hung there for a moment, his legs swaying off the edge of the roof and me holding on for his dear life.

And then he started laughing.

“Uh oh,” he laughed.

“Shit, grandad!” I yelled. “This IS NOT funny.”

Thing was, grandad had upper body strength like horse. He could grab a jackhammer with his wirey frame and tear down concrete walls like they were paper. He often put me to shame when, walking with two canes, he’d lift bales of hay (used for shoring up beach erosion) like they were nothing.

So he did a pull up, using first my arms, then my torso, then my legs to pull him to the apex of the roof. And then it was back to work (with me eventually scrambling down the chimney to grab the fallen ladder).

The one comfort, the one major variation to his younger work days, was that we took 45 minute lunch breaks. It was during that time he’d tell me all kinds of stories from his youth, growing up in the depression, raising a family of 5, working colorful and interesting jobs. Grandad was a storyteller. He liked to talk to people, learn their stories, and intertwine them with his narrative. I would listen for hours, often with grandma chipping in with some details, mesmerized.

For grandad, stories boiled down to a usual assortment of elements. There was the church, the CRC and RCA denominations that formed the bedrock of a solid Christian faith. There was family. There were friends who, almost always, were tied to the church. And there was work. Simple ingredients, but with my grandad’s master touch, regaled me every minute.

I think about those two summers often. A grandson should have that opportunity, to work with his grandad and experience a love and pride in hard work, stories, and blood. Sometimes, today, it seems as though generations are too far, too broadly paced. Families are far and shared moments come fleetingly during a holiday or two. Sure, you might be able to convince your older relatives to join Facebook where you can catch the occasional update on what they’re doing. But it’s not the same as a shared experience.

My grandad died 6 years ago today. I didn’t see him his last month which, according to my dad, was a good thing. He suffered a stroke a month before he died. And he wasn’t all grandad anymore. More like bits and pieces.

Ren and I lived in Houston at the time. The funeral was in Michigan on the second to the last day of school. And, in one of the most regrettable moments of my life, I didn’t make the funeral.

At 32, that’s the do over I want out of this life. I want to yell out my younger self and tell him to get on the damn plane and be with his family. Say a proper goodbye and tell a few of grandad’s crazy stories.

That’s the do over I really want.

I realize that, so far, I’ve been blessed. No great tragedies. A wonderful, loving wife. Two new daughters. A profession I’m passionate about. A church that’s home and friends to pray and fellowship with.

But I have a strong suspicion that, along with providence (or as a part of providence), a good many of those blessings have roots that go back to my grandad.

And I miss him.

I’ve become that man, that grumpy old man, who yells at kids to get off his yard.

We live on a culdesac that, for some reason, never gets picked up by the all knowing google maps. People frequently map their way to our house only to call us at the dead end on the other side, staring at a row of honey suckle and locust trees.

The other side of the dead end, the side we don’t live on, has a road that runs into Section 8 housing. In Cincinnati, Section 8 usually means poor and black. On our side of the dead end the road runs to a Jehovah’s Witness church which has a nice basketball court.

See where this is going?

It used to be that everyone would cut through our neighbors yard. Our thicket of trees and brambles were too much of a hassle. Our neighbor’s drive way ran up along the dead end, so folks only had to navigate a small tangle of honey suckle.

But about 3 weeks ago he got fed up. Two young men came traipsing through his lawn and driveway and then promptly threw 2 beer bottles into our street. Over the years we’ve both had things stolen and dumped on our property (not to mention the occasional high speed chase ending in the honey suckle). He had enough. He planted 2 pricker bushes and put “No Trespassing” signs in front of the trees, thereby diverting the traffic through my yard.

And there is a lot of traffic. Kids run their bikes through our yard. Push strollers through the brambles. Irritate McKenzie to no end (she goes after them from time to time). Occasionally frighten our daughters (all strangers who are scary are called “locos”).

I yell at them. At first I was polite. Adults, generally, get the point. But the young teens – spitting images of the kids I used to teach in Houston – kept walking through. Now I’m gruff and to the point.

“Get off my property. Quit riding your bikes on my lawn. Go use the side walk for crying out loud.”

Not that this works. They’ve taken to cussing and sassing me. When they do, Ren calls Springfield township police.  Her mama bear instincts get working and she’s no nonsense.

They usually take off running when the cops show up.

“Winton Terrace?” The cops usually ask.

“Yeah” we say.

“Okay,” they sigh. “We try and keep Section 8 with Section 8.”

The whole situation frustrates me. I’m pissed at the kids, who are being straight A standard pubescent punks. I’m annoyed at myself for being “that guy”. I’m sad that I’m experiencing a stereotype that’s turning true to form. I’m worried for my daughters who associate strangers – particularly strangers who talk back with cuss words – with some very bad history.

Fortunately, we’ve got good neighbors who are just as likely to confront bad behavior as we are. I have back up.

But we’re thinking of putting up a fence.

Gail Collins‘ great quote on teachers today:

Can I digress, people, and say that while it’s important to make teachers accountable, telling them their jobs could hinge on their students’ grades on one test is a terrible idea? The women and men who go into teaching tend, as a group, to be both extremely dedicated and extremely risk-averse. The stability of their profession is a very important part of its draw. You do not want to make this an anything-can-happen occupation, unless you are prepared to compensate them like hedge fund traders.

Two words: Historical Ignorance.

I mean, I am a recent teacher of history. American history at that. And for crying out loud, there are standards in this most states!  Objectives that, supposedly, every student is taught.

After watching so many interviews of tea partiers you’d think they’d never cracked a history book. Or even the occasional dictionary.

From Slate:

And if Obama’s not a socialist fascist communist, he may be—ooh, scary, kids!—a “progressive,” which, as Victoria Jackson learned from the erudite Glenn Beck, is really a secret “code word” for communist.

And they believe him! That’s the thing. The recent New York Times study of T.P.ers reported that party members are “better educated” than most Americans. But educated in what? Clearly, they—or at least a significant, influential portion of them—are utterly uneducated in history. One can get a college degree without taking a single class in world history and thus still be ripe for the idiot distortions of a Glenn Beck.

Most people with a basic grounding in history find Tea Party ignorance something to laugh about, certainly not something to take seriously. But I would argue that history demonstrates that historical ignorance is dangerous and that it can have tragic consequences, however laughable it may initially seem. And thus the media, liberals, and others are misguided in laughing it off. And educated conservatives are irresponsible in staying silent in the face of these distortions.

The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It’s offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all thereal victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered. It trivializes such suffering inexcusably for the T.P.ers to claim that they are suffering from similar oppression because they might have their taxes raised or be subject to demonic “federal regulation.”

And

words matter, sometimes in a life-and-death way. Take for instance the Tea Party demonization of “federal regulation” as the instrument of the tyranny that’s been imposed on them. I would like every Tea Partier who has denounced federal regulation to write a letter to the widows and children of the coalminers in West Virginia who died because of the failure of “federal regulation” of mine safety.

Or, for that matter,  adoptive parents working with two federal governments in insuring children are placed in safe homes.

I believe you can quite respectfully have views that favor limited government and individual liberties. But when a growing group starts to really believe the hyperbole and outright lies, then it’s time to get concerned

I am reminded by one of my favorite MLK quotes:

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”