The media camper van on the rack in West Virginia: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

The last thing I would ever want to do is compare myself to a Biblical character like Job.

Job was a rich man in his time, if he really existed, which is a scholarly dispute to this day among Christians, Jews, Mormons and even within Islam, since the story of Job is also told in the Quran.

But as I sit here broke down and desperate in a town in West Virginia with a major yellow water problem, the only other literary character I can think of as a reference is Mark Twain. I published a piece about that last night.

Mark Twain Couldn’t Pull the Trigger: Instead He Wrote About a Jumping Frog

For people who are just now seeing the posts on Facebook about what’s going on here, I had already described the basic problems. So here’s that story link so I don’t have to explain it again in Facebook posts and comments for those who happen to arrive in the middle of the story and want answers.

Careening Through the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia

The Story of Job

Here is a simplified version of the story of Job.

An artistic depiction of Job: NAJ screen shot from Wikipedia

He is presented as a good and prosperous family man who is suddenly beset with horrendous disasters that take away all he holds dear — a scenario intended to test his faith in God. Struggling mightily to understand this situation, Job reflects on his despair but consistently remains devout and devoted to justice.

It begins with an introduction to Job’s character — he is described as a blessed man who lives righteously in the Land of Uz. The Lord’s praise of Job prompts an angel with the title of “satan” (“Adversary”) to suggest that Job served God simply because God protected him.

So God is said to have removed Job’s protection and gives permission to the angel to take his wealth, his children, and his physical health (but not his life). Despite his difficult circumstances, he does not curse God, but rather curses the day of his birth. And although he anguishes over his plight, he stops short of accusing God of injustice. Job’s miserable earthly condition is simply God’s will, he concludes.

Job debates with three friends concerning his condition. They argue whether it was justified, and they debate solutions to his problems. Job ultimately condemns all their counsel, beliefs, and critiques of him as false.

God then appears to Job and his friends out of a whirlwind. God rebukes the three friends and gives them instruction for the remission of sin, followed by Job being restored to an even better condition than his former wealthy state. Job is blessed to have seven sons, and three daughters named Jemimah (which means “dove”), Keziah (“cinnamon”), and Keren-happuch (“horn of eye-makeup”). His daughters were said to be the most beautiful in all the land.

According to various online resources, Job is the central figure of the Book of Job in the Bible. Even in Islam, Job is also considered a prophet.

Prologue

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied.

“Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.”

In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

The story goes on, but you get the picture.

I would never charge God with wrong doing. But there are a few behemoths I would like to see throttled.

An artistic depiction of the demon angels Behemoth and Leviathan: NAJ screen shot from Wikipedia

In some versions of the story, the demon who came after Job was called Behemoth, a beast in the form of the primeval chaos-monster created by God at the beginning of creation. He is paired with the other chaos-monster, Leviathan, and according to later Jewish tradition both would become food for the righteous at the “end-time.”

Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful and evil entity. There is one who immediately comes to mind who shall remain nameless here.

Take now behemoth, whom I made as I did you;
He eats grass, like the cattle.
His strength is in his loins,
His might in the muscles of his belly.
He makes his tail stand up like a cedar;
The sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are like tubes of bronze,
His limbs like iron rods.
He is the first of God’s works;
Only his Maker can draw the sword against him.
The mountains yield him produce,
Where all the beasts of the field play.
He lies down beneath the lotuses,
In the cover of the swamp reeds.
The lotuses embower him with shade;
The willows of the brook surround him.
He can restrain the river from its rushing;
He is confident the stream will gush at his command.
Can he be taken by his eyes?
Can his nose be pierced by hooks?

Literary Devices

Now I don’t tend to put much stock in such stories, except to the extent that a literary lesson can be depicted through them.

Never fear for I will not now also tell you my entire life story again, since I already did that in a book.

Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again

A Test of Conscience

But I do want to convey a central point here about how I’ve come to live my life in a certain way and then briefly explain the problem.

It’s been so long ago it’s hard for me to remember when my philosophy of life came into its own. It didn’t really take hold until after a lot of time and effort getting an education. But I think it started coming together when I was a teenager going through that phase as some do when the faith you grow up with comes under challenge.

It has been my observation that many adolescents go through a similar period when your conscience itself is challenged, when you literally wonder whether it does any good to be good, when all around you evil, greed and selfishness seem to flourish and triumph. We could easily talk about the current presidential election in this regard, but will avoid that politics here. The wrong people could be finding this online as we speak.

But I think we can all agree that greed and selfishness seem out of control. I’ve written about this many times already, including the role social media plays in this. The root evolutionary competition at play here is the selfish gene vs. the trait of altruism, which is critical for our very survival as a species and certainly a country.

When Tim Walz talks about us all being neighbors, that’s what he’s really talking about.

But perhaps this struggle with conscience does not happen to everybody, since I’ve asked people about this before and those who have lived good, straight lives with very few problems seem to never be willing to admit it happened to them.

There’s even a fair amount of academic research about this, mostly in the field of psychology and research into human brain development. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that today, but anyone interested in this research can start here, or use a search engine for yourself.

Teen Brain: Behavior, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

This is the way it happened for me. I promise to keep this as brief as possible, since I’ve told some of this story before, and I realize many people do not have time for this. Nowadays most people would rather just have everything summed up for them in a meme on Facebook or a tweet on X, and in a few comments, I guess. There are many stories than can’t be summarized in a simple meme or comment. This is one of them.

Around the time that my dad died when I was 15, actually even before that, I went through a phase of testing the boundaries of my own conscience. This was even before I experimented with drugs back then, in the 1970s, when drugs, sex and rock and roll made it to the South a decade late, as I’ve written about fairly extensively.

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll But I Like It

I believe it started in summer school one year, maybe when I was in the eighth grade, when I had one really mean teacher who seemed to target me specifically for punishment. I don’t recall her name for sure, maybe Ms. Smith, but I remember on the first day of summer school I picked out a desk I liked. She wouldn’t let me have it because she wanted to be strict about a seating plan. There were plenty of desks to choose from. Some were fairly large and made of wood. Others were smaller and had plastic seats and backs. I liked a larger wooden seat.

When I tried to comply with her plan, and moved the desk to where she wanted me to sit, that really seemed to piss her off. She literally got the principle involved, accusing me of being a discipline problem. For picking a freaking desk?

Yes, there are all kinds of assholes in this world, and a control freak like that does not belong in a classroom teaching kids anything, much less how to live a just and honest life and how to succeed in the world.

All I wanted was a comfortable seat. I was not happy about having to attend summer school anyway. And I was not happy with the reading assignment, which I do remember was The Bridge of San Luis Rey by American author Thornton Wilder published in 1927. As a 14-year-old kid, I was not that interested in this story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who witnesses the accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.

There was no reason. Accidents happen. People die.

So after class one day, a friend who had a motorcycle, I do not remember his name, offered to give me a ride home so I wouldn’t have to walk the mile from school. He was on his way to the mall, I kid you not, to do some shop lifting. I swear I’m not making this up.

I went along, and tried it out for myself. I don’t remember much about what we stole, although I do have a vague recollection of stealing record albums from a TG&Y store, which is long gone and out of business. Perhaps they should not have displayed the records right by the exit door? I also remember one of the records being Alice Cooper’s “Schools Out” album, released in 1972. I still had that record until I sold my collection after moving back to Birmingham in 2005. The title track contained the verse and chorus:

No more pencils, no more books
No more teachers, dirty looks
Out for summer, out ’til fall
We might not come back at all

School’s out for summer
School’s out forever
I’m bored to pieces

Of course I was not out for summer, because of having to make up one grade credit or something. So I rebelled.

But I must tell you that this phase did not last long. On the way to summer church camp that year, another friend and I got caught stealing Boone’s Farm wine T-Shirts by taking them into the bathroom and putting them on under the shirts we came in wearing. But we were not busted for shop lifting. A savvy salesman, probably in the Pizitz store in Roebuck east of Birmingham, simply stopped us and asked: “Gentleman?” he said with a questioning tone in his voice. “Did you plan to buy those T-shirts today?” Emphasizing the word BUY.

We hemmed and hawed and coughed up the money, spending some of the funds we had to spend at summer camp on candy and such at the canteen.

That was not very fun, so I believe that ended my shop lifting days. But I do remember having this conversation with myself, and perhaps others, about guilt, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was not just the threat of punishment that should deter bad behavior. It was not the threat of Santa Claus watching kids who were naughty or nice, and it had nothing to do with religion either, that a god would punish us for bad behavior.

Although I must admit, there are times when we really hope certain bad people with bad karma come to a bad end, like you know who.

I just independently came to the conclusion that to be a good person, you should treat other people right and fairly and try to do no harm. After much academic experience, I also tried to learn how to behave with what is often called “character and class.” I even tried to incorporate this in teaching in my decade as a college professor.

Not financial or social class. More like what great teachers and coaches like Nick Saban came to try to teach his football players at the University of Alabama.

The Saban Pledge of Excellence Could Work in Government and Business

Then later, actually about 10 years ago, I had the chance to begin interacting with National Park Service rangers, a special class of American professional who often exemplify this way of interacting with the public. So I’ve tried to learn even more about this from the great rangers I’ve known and became friends with over the past few years.

In short, I do not need a Ten Commandments hanging on the school house wall to make me avoid being a thief, a murderer or an adulterer, or to lie about my neighbor or covet his wife.

Every god ever depicted in stories had an edict to avoid worshiping other gods. This “one god” business led to the mass slaughter of the pagans and vikings by the Saxon Christians back when, literally over this idea that there is only one god, and if you don’t pick the right one, you will burn in eternal hell fire.

For me and so many other good people, it’s not just the threat of prison or hell that keeps us from bad pursuits, although perhaps deterrence works for some. We just know it’s the right thing to do, and what wrong thing to avoid.

An example. Let’s say I finally get to the point where I feel so desperate and betrayed that I decide to take my own life. This happens every day in our capitalist society, where the deck is stacked against poor people, not just women and minorities.

I have taken a vow with myself that if that day comes, I will not, under any circumstances, pick up a gun and take a bunch of other people out with me. This sense of desperation is clearly rampant in our society. The unfairness that runs through our system has much to do with the mass shootings that take place on a regular basis.

It would be easy to dismiss these perpetrators as being crazy loons and gun nuts. Maybe some of them are. But if you read down in many of these stories – and the press in this country rarely explore this in-depth – you will find a desperation borne of unfairness. Many tried to get help, but never could find it. In some cases there were early warnings, often ignored by those with authority.

For God’s sake, if you believe in one, reach out and help somebody.

Let’s face it, people can be mean and unforgiving, especially these days. For some, this becomes too much. They see how others seem to get even, and even famous on the news, by trying to set the record on the number of people killed in a mass shooting with an assault rifle they should not even have a right to possess.

Hey, over population is a growing problem. There are just too many damn people in the world. Why not take a few assholes out too?

Clearly this is not the answer. It only ends the pain, because in death, the pain stops.

But it only begets more evil and pain for others. Violence is never the answer. Killing a presidential candidate would only make them a martyr to those who follow along, and perhaps even make the meanness worse.

A Family Note

Just so people will know, I basically gave up chasing a career in Washington journalism in 2005 to move back to Birmingham to allow my aging mother, 79 at the time, to remain in the house she had lived in since 1960. It was the early blogging era, after all, so I went independent on the web. But after nine years of that, we put together a plan to get her in a retirement community and the economy seemed back enough from the Great Recession to put the house on the market.

As part of that plan, I got this Roadtrek camper van, remodeled it as a media van, and ultimately moved back to the D.C. area to learn the nation’s capital city so I could write about it and cover politics there. I got to live the dream for the better part of 10 years, on and off since I traveled back South the first five winters. I also volunteered with the National Park Service, and basically embedded with that agency to learn all about it too.

The Problem

So I’ve already outlined the physical problem I’m having.

Careening Through the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia

And the spiritual experience that took me in this direction.

Secret Vistas: A Spiritual Experience in Nature and a New Direction

Now let me briefly tell you what happened and where things stand.

Wednesday afternoon I thought I had made it. I was almost out of here and back on the road west.

But once this RV and tire shop fixed the right-front wheel bearing on Ramsey the Roadtrek Media Camper van, replaced both brake calipers, hoses and pads, put the tires back on and conducted a test drive, it still had the vibration going on.

The shop manager first thought it might be a tire separating causing it to shake.

Then he said they all appeared to be OK.

Then he thought it needed the wheel bearing and brake work.

But after that didn’t fix it, he checked the tires again and discovered that the left rear tire was going bad, causing the vibration. So technically, I could have gotten out of here for a $198 tire, which by itself is outrageous.

He seemed like a good guy trying to do the right thing. He didn’t charge me for both wheel bearings, parts or labor. So with the tire, it still came out at about the original estimate, $971 and change.

But I thought it was worth it to spend the money on the work anyway, which was in fact needed. The van is over 20 years old and does need a lot of work. And I still had money for gas to get to Arkansas.

But on the last test drive, he came back and antifreeze and water were pouring out the bottom of the van, and it was running hot. They tried to diagnose it, but they don’t do engine work. It’s basically a tire place that does brakes and wheel bearings and such with a few campsites out front by the road with electric, (yellow) water and sewer hookups.

So trying to get rid of me and on my way, they got some stop leak and filled up the radiator with antifreeze, which he didn’t charge me for, and sent me on my way.

I got up on I64 headed west toward Lexington, thinking it would cool down once I got it up to speed and the wind and fan came into play. It seemed to be doing that on the first down hill.

But then before I could get to the next exit, eight miles ahead, it redlined on the temperature gauge.

I got off at the exit, let it cool down in the shade, and called Doug back at the shop. He agreed to comp me on camping for another night to figure this out.

On the way back, however, it died on the side of the road, my worst nightmare, which I thought I had avoided on this trip.

It had to be towed back to the RV camping spot.

The towing company wanted $295 for towing me 3 miles. The guy felt sorry for me and called it in and only charged for one hour, which was $195. That was most of the money I had left to get to Arkansas. He even gave me a ride to an ATM .8 miles away to pay in cash to avoid the extra 3.5 percent from the bank for using the card. He was a nice and helpful guy named Tim.

So as I said last night on Facebook I’m just telling you straight up from here, it appears I am totally screwed and stuck in Milton, West Virginia. And let me tell you it does not look like a good place to die. I should have stopped in New River Gorge.

My buddy Ron called from Arkansa and we talked for a long time while I unpacked the cooler into the fridge for one more night. The ice was all melted anyway. I am at the end of the rope. Don’t know what to do.

But of course I decided against any rash conclusion or action. I ate some of the last of the food, got a buzz, and once again began to think about what to do and how to get through this dilemma. I figured I would write something, and I had a few beers left, including one 1623 Brewing Stout. There was chicken and pasta salad, for one more night.

If I thought prayers would help, I would ask for them. But like the Drive By Truckers, I don’t put much stock in thoughts and prayers. Only a massive infusion of cash will help me now. If I could have made it to Arkansas, I could have found more work, maybe even a teaching gig, and maybe even a big old diamond in that campground out there where they are still finding them.

But I felt like a character in a country song. Broke down in West Virginia with no place to go or any way to get there.

I saw the meme about Jesus coming back any day now. Maybe you saw it too.

I thought if Jesus is going to come back to save us all, this would be a really good time to show up.

Otherwise it’s about to be too late. If this election goes wrong, I’m probably out of here anyway. I do not wish to live another four years like that.

So there.

I am reluctant to ask people for more money, but it appears I have no choice. At some point it almost seems unfair.

Google owes me over a million dollars, but I can’t find a law firm to take the case. The Artificial Intelligence crowd in Silicon Valley also should be paying me SOMETHING for using my archives to train their bots to totally put me out of business as a writer and photographer. But nobody will take that case either.

So here I sit, now with no shade out in the hot sun, trying to figure out which mechanic to call next to try to diagnose and potentially fix my problem, worried whether it can be fixed – and whether I can raise the money to pay.

So if you have it in your heart, and the extra money in the bank, maybe you can help us one more time.

I swear if I ever win the big lottery, or find that diamond, or whatever, I will pay you all back, with love.

___
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