As the school year is upon us, I took sometime to think about a few friends I miss dearly.    This is a tribute to my old buddy Norm Taylor.  This is another one of those things I wrote because I had to get it out of my system…or preserve it, perhaps.  Still, whatever the reason, I share it here with you for the first time in publication.

Far Above the Norm

The room was full of laughter, for the most part.  That is the way it should be, I think.  Me, I just did not handle it too well, not that anyone there did, or should.  We all grieve in our own way.  In the Day and Carter Mortuary on Monday, December 2,  2012, many of us gathered to pay tribute to one Norm Taylor.  His memorial service was held there.

Norm Taylor was a good man.  To me, he was a good friend.  We were colleagues (I’ve always hated that word “colleagues”) to most that may have seen us together.  He and I together saw each other as friends more than that c-word I’ve already used twice.

Norm was the counselor at the NorthLawrenceCareerCenter in Bedford.  He was the voice of reason to scores of kids at the CareerCenter for more than fifteen years.  He advised them.  He hugged them when they needed it.  He listened.  The kids counted on him.

The student population at the North Lawrence Career Center is comprised of youngsters from Bedford North Lawrence High School, as well as what we call “sending schools”…schools that send some of their students to get educational opportunities their high schools do not provide.  “Sending schools’ in 2012 included Brownstown, Medora, Orleans, Mitchell, and so on.  One thing I loved about Norm was that he took an interest in all his students, be they from Bedford, Mitchell, or Medora.  If I heard it once the days following his death, I heard it a thousand times.  It rings like a sweet song each time I hear it and even as I type these very words, “Norm just loved kids”…he wanted to see them succeed and he would do anything he could to facilitate their success.

Norm and I had a great deal in common.  We both were enthusiastic about music.  Two days before his death I spoke to him on the telephone.  We were getting excited about seeing each other three times in the next three weeks.  On November 30^th, we were going to have Counselors Day at the Career Center, an annual get-together for counselors of the schools with students attending the career center.  On December 6^th, we had plans to get together at the Murat Theatre to see a concert by my favorite music group, The Moody Blues.  A Moodies maniac for many years, I was delighted Norm was finally getting around seeing them after years of my cajoling.  Then on December 14th, the big one was coming.  Norm, who hosted the Indiana History Project television show, was going to tape a show with me being his guest.  I write songs and try to play guitar while I sing them.  It usually works out.  Having recorded a couple CDs of original tunes, I am proud to say Norm was a fan mine just as I was a fan of his.

On Monday evening, November 28^th, I was in my home office.  I had a guitar strapped around the back of my neck.  I had song lyrics with scribbled chords peppered all over my desk.  I had a Moody Blues cassette sitting near, a prop I was going to share as Norm and I taped his show.  I was thinking of Norm Taylor and how thankful I was to know him. I was thinking about all the fun we had and how much fun we were going to have.

In the middle of the second verse of a song I was playing, the phone rang.  My friend, Brad McCammon, called to tell me he had heard a report that Norm Taylor had died.  I quickly made a couple other phone calls until I reached the authoritative source I knew would give me the information I was or was not looking for.

When I caught my breath, I went back to my desk and immediately thought of something Norm Taylor told me the first time he heard a song I had written for a friend of mine who had died in 1997.  The song was titled “Don’t Miss the Last Dance”.  The sentiment of the song is just as the title suggests.

Understand this: Norm Taylor could shake his head in an approving manner that meant more than most people can say in ten minutes.  After listening to the song he shook his head, and said, “That’s a great tribute, Dan.” He paused before continuing, “I know your friend would be touched…he would be proud, Dan.”

Knowing he too was gone, looking back on that moment, Norm Taylor continued to teach me.  He made me realize we are all going to miss the last dance.  Norm and I did.  It’s all the other dances leading up to the last one that really count.

I suppose you wouldn’t be surprised if I said Norm Taylor knew how to…speak the rights.

The last dance Norm and I missed.

Danny Johnson

Yesterday I was on a not so busy two-lane highway that I use to transport my personage to get my allergy shots.  Pesky things those allergy shots.  They take time.  They take money.  They hurt.  I tell myself they make me feel better.  My nose and sinuses tend to confirm that.

On the way home I saw a very precious and welcoming sight.  On the east side of a north-south highway I was travelling north on, I saw a young girl…4 or 5 years old…driving in one of those battery-powered four- wheelers that children have a tendency to enjoy tooling around yards and driveways in.

This 4-wheeler was pink and decorated quite nicely.  The child was at least seventeen yards away from the road; there was no threat of danger to either of us.

What struck me was the way the child was intently looking at the other driver…me… and how she had both hands firmly on the steering wheel similarly to what we (those of us that took driver education) were taught.

Good for you young lady, I thought to myself.  Keep it up.

More importantly, keep that firm grip on the steering wheel!  Do not let go of it one day just because your little cell phone goes off and you think it is humanly impossible not to respond immediately to something that is doubtfully a matter of life and death…or much of anything really significant.

Translation:  Do Not Text and Drive!!!!

I have an ulterior motive here…I am greedy.  I want to live!

I drive at least 108 miles or more about 250 days of the year.

I am sick and tired of seeing folks with their heads titled at a 45 degree angle;  they are not looking at their odometers.  They are looking at their darn phones.

Who cares what “twitter” has to say if your safety depends on how you navigate a motorized vehicle through ample amounts of traffic or a country road that insists that you stay on your side of it for the sake of the safety of you and those around you.

It is tough enough on some country roads where I live given the massive deer population…I have hit five of Bambi’s cousins myself.

What is worse is the fact that I am now dodging idiots looking down at their cell phones as they are finding me hurtling toward them at a normal rate of speed…or slower thanks to these morons…and they jerk their cars back into the space they were intended to drive in based on the rules of the road.

Okay.  I do talk on telephone as I travel.  Given I have a long commute, it is the best way to keep up with some folks and find out what I need to get at the Jay C Grocery Store in Salem on my way home.

I do not, however, try to read as I am going down the road.

I am faced with a dilemma here.

Each time I see someone looking at their precious phone as I am driving,  I want to honk my horn.  I abstain from such a reaction because I do not want to startle the poor fool and potentially cause them more pain than they already have in their lives.  But…it is tempting.

If you make a habit of texting and driving, go ahead and look around your closet and pick out something you can wear at your funeral…or something you can wear as you are visiting my funeral.  I have a distinct fear this is not going to work out very well for one of us!  I hope and pray I am mistaken.

Know that when I speak the rights on these pages, I am not at a stop sign or a stop light.

Danny Johnson

In Indiana, Madison, Indiana to be exact (you may recall a movie about a hydroplane racing boat by the same name), there is a sign I always chuckle at when I pass by.

The sign, as the picture indicates, informs interested motorists that these two towns are in the direction after the next right turn.

Kent Austin is the name of the Hamilton Tiger Cats’ head coach.  The TiCats, as they are often called,  play in the Canadian Football League.  I watched part of a game last night.  Calgary was playing British Columbia.  It was an entertaining game…but the 10 pm kickoff made it too late for me to hang in there.  Wish I could have seen it all.  No…I don’t have a device to tape whatever I want on TV.  BC won by one point.  Calgary lost its first game.  They are now 4 and 1.

Kent Austin played quarterback at Ole Miss when I was in high school in Indiana.  I rarely got to see him play.  Thirty years ago we did not get to choose to watch what teams we wanted to.  We watched the couple of games that showed up on the television and one of them was narrated by Keith Jackson.

Still…I did my best to keep up with how the Ole Miss Rebs were doing by reading the newspaper and getting out a pencil and paper and figuring up statistics like the maniac I was about those sorts of things.

I can to this day recite the NFL’s quarterback rating formula that I am not sure they even use anymore.  In 1981, Ken Anderson’s qb rating was 98.5.  He led the league and was 10 points ahead of the NFC’s leader that year.  That quarterback was named Joe Montana.  He was in his third year.

1981 was the NFL’s greatest season.  The Super Bowl was truly the Cinderella Bowl that January 24, 1982. The Cincinnati Bengals played the San Francisco 49ers in Detroit’s Pontiac Silverdome.

Both  Anderson’s Cincinnati Bengals and Montana’s San Francisco 49ers had records of 6 wins and 10 losses the season before in 1980.  In 1981,  the Bengals were 12 wins and 4 losses.  That same year, the 49ers were 13 wins and 3 losses.  The Bengals were Bungles in the first half of the Super Bowl.  Turnovers led to a 20-0 halftime deficit.  I was a Bengals fan.  I was very sad at the half.

The 49ers held on to win Super Bowl XVI by a score of 26-21.  It was the first time in Super Bowl history….and probably still holds…that the losing team, the Bengals, scored more touchdowns and had more offensive yards and still lost.

In fact the MVP, Joe Montana,  threw for 157 yards and Ken Anderson threw for 300 yards and broke the completion percentage record for the game after he completed 25 of the 34 throws he made.  A few years later Phil Simms would do better leading the Giants.  You can look it up.

So there…just to help you get warmed up for football season…you get a NFL history lesson even though all I sat down here to do was to share a picture of an Indiana highway sign I think to be amusing.

Just goes to show you.  Anything is possible…when you speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Carrie and I put our son, Jarrett, on a plane this afternoon at Louisville, Kentucky’s Standiford Field.  As I type these words he is probably on a tarmac at Hartsfield International in Atlanta.  His Delta  Jet….”FLY DELTA JETS” is on a sign near a hangar you can see as you speed down runway at Hartsfield (I suppose it is still there)…is going to take off at 10:17 PM.  He is flying from Atlanta, Georgia to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  He will from there find a mode of transportation…probably a crappy plane that needs its oil changed…to the US Military Airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Jarrett is no longer in the military.  He is working there as a civilian.

He did spend many years in the Army.  He finished as a Staff Sargent…I think.

Jarrett, I mentioned in another post, did one stint in Iraq and served two deployments in Afghanistan.  You want to talk about a couple proud parents.  You want to talk about a couple relieved parents.  Well, Carrie and I probably don’t want to talk about it.

The times Jarrett was in harm’s way to the extreme during his deployments were difficult on us.

I remember one time we were talking to him on the telephone and it was like listening to one of those hairy episodes of M*A*S*H….we heard a big old KAA-BOOOOM in the background.  That night was one of the rare times in my life that I ever lost sleep.

Those days are gone, Thank God.

Still…it was so so hard this afternoon to let him go.  To watch him go out of sight knowing he will be so far from any help we can offer him in the here and now.  Oh yes, we pray for him.  We pray for him fiercely.  I believe in my heart this is a great and wonderful thing; I still wish I was closer to him in case he needs me.

On the way to airport, our car was kinda heavy with the task at hand.  We had to say good-bye to him.  It is never easy.  I tried to cut through the thick mental fog we were all travelling through by asking Jarrett about the helicopters he helps to maintain in the civil job he now has.

We had good speaks.  I tried to impress him with some verbiage that was uncommonly spot-on.  I got lucky, I guess.  I don’t know anything about transmission housings or stress problems in casings…but I talked like I did and he never felt like he had to explain anything to me in great depth.  Heck, I actually felt pretty smart for a change.

I am evading why I sat down here to write this.

Between deployments and leave and back again and this new job and back again, I have lost count on how many times Jarrett has gotten on a plane to fly to the other side of this big blue marble while we are left to hear word that he is safe and sound and made it to his destination in one piece.

This does not get easier for his mother and me.  It is not routine.  We are still waiting for the phone call from Jarrett that lets us know he made it to his destination and he tell us it is 112 degrees there.  Only then will we breathe deep again and wait for the next phone call and count the days, weeks, and months until he is back with us here in the U.S. of A.

Jarrett has a job to do.  He is good at it.  If he wasn’t…he wouldn’t be there.

Do me a favor and keep him in your prayers.

In times like these, flying to Afghanistan is not routine travel.

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Our sons, Cody and Jarrett, fishing on Blue River a couple weeks ago.