Three Sons

THREE SONS

Three sons of neighbors; a contrast:

              Marlene’s son Mike thrashed around during high school, went on to become a Journeyman Carpenter after a four-year apprenticeship.  Bored by the rote of the occupation and apprehensive of losing fingers or falling from scaffolding, he became an Engineering Aide with the city government of his hometown.  This was after simultaneously obtaining a two-year degree from his local community college. 

              His mother, Marlene, her graduate work in Geography, was variously a teacher, a welfare worker and finally a mid-level administrator for a large County.  His late-father was a civil engineer with his own company.

              After several years, Mike’s city position was outsourced.  He then was hired by a contractor and trained to become a fiber-optics technician at the Navy Air Warfare Center at China Lake, CA, where he works with testing exotic weaponry.  Involved in civic work, he is a long-term Treasurer with the Eagles in Ridgecrest, CA.

               A champion bowler, his hobby morphed from competition Smallbore Rifle to that indoor sport.  His several finger-rings he has earned attest to his prowess.

His job is helping keep America safe by working with weapons to eradicate the enemies of our nation.  Or, as his proud step-father proclaims, he is employed at helping kill the bad guys of the world.

Not an easy task there in the brutal climate of the Mojave Desert; he works outside in weather alternating from snowy wintry storms on high mountains to the stifling intense summer heat of dry lakes on the desert floor.  Skin cancers from exposure to the sun’s deadly rays are one result.

              Jack’s son Jeff bluffed his way through high school, plowed his way through the University of Tennessee all the way to a PhD in Ecology. He was determined to save the world from self-destruction.  Interning with the National Park Service, his work was outstanding enough and his experience wide enough to be hired onto the Park Service staff. 

              Jack was just a Navy enlisted man albeit possessing an education.

His son had wandered through the fringes of academia from living on a raft in the Everglades while doing research to teaching classes in the Amazon at the University of Manaus in Brazil and scuba-diving to study the coral reefs of the Florida coast.  Jeff serves as an Adjunct Professor from time-to-time at the U of TN-Chattanooga.  His expertise in fisheries, riverine and limnology sciences is so vast that he has been detached by the U.S. National Park Service to aid with the amelioration of the Mekong River halieutics that are being disturbed by Chinese dam-building upstream.

First, Cambodia asked for his assistance.  Next, Vietnam sent for him to help their plight.  Both nations fear for the diminishment of a vital protein source to feed their millions.  Vietnam, especially, fears for a dearth of river water to flood the rice fields.  Millions more throughout Asia depend on Vietnam’s exports of rice grown in the Mekong Delta.  Reducing that flow might result in famine.

Linda’s son Bryan chose a different route while in high school.  He decided to be one of the gang addicted to some of the various forms of narcotics.  Showing that he was one of “the gang,” he spent a majority of his adulthood to date in Florence, AZ.  Now, in case the reader doesn’t know, Florence is noted for its several Arizona State Prison complexes. 

Bryan, not educated enough to make any other type of living, had become so “institutionalized” that he was unable to survive in adulthood outside of the drug trade.  Ignorance, lack of education, also made it easy to make many mistakes repeatedly leading him from idyllic Lake Havasu back to Florence and incarceration.

Now, 38 years old and once more living at home with Linda, he returned to his addictive behavior and began dealing dope from mom’s garage – at night.  “Under the cover of darkness,” stupidly, is just when authorities expect these drogues on society to engage in their nefarious activities.  Bingo!

Again, he was apprehended and Linda’s house subjected to a SWAT team night time search complete with a phalanx of heavily armed agents.  There were flashing red and blue lights, hailers ordering occupants to exit with their hands up as well as the employment of a “flash-bang.”  The entire peaceful neighborhood was disturbed by a miscreant unable to ever be a productive member of society.

Bryan’s mother, apparently still feeling she could never become a viable member of the amicable neighborhood, ostracized herself.  Her son never contributed to society; quite the opposite, his dealing of drugs mired others into the cesspool of the drug culture.

Life is funny that way.  Some “do.”  Some “don’t.”  Some contribute; some rip asunder.  Marlene and I thank God that our two sons both became contributing citizens.

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